Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20a66_new_m6io.pdf
Page Number: 34.0

Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2020) 

11 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

still cannot cast a successful vote.  And because that is true, 
the ballot-receipt deadline that once survived constitutional 
review no longer does.6   
  That  deadline,  contrary  to  JUSTICE KAVANAUGH’s  view, 
now disenfranchises Wisconsin citizens—however much he 
objects to applying that term here.  Far from using the word 
“rhetoric[ally],”  ante,  at  15,  I  mean  it  precisely.    During 
COVID, the State’s ballot-receipt deadline and the Court’s 
decision  upholding  it  disenfranchise  citizens  by  depriving 
them of their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.  Be-
cause the Court refuses to reinstate the district court’s in-
junction, Wisconsin will throw out thousands of timely re-
quested and timely cast mail ballots.  And today’s decision 
does  not  stand  alone.    In  other  recent  cases  as  well,  the 
Court  has  halted  injunctions  necessary  for  people  to  cast 
ballots safely.   See Merrill  v.  People  First  of Ala.,  ante, p. 
___; Merrill v. People First of Ala., 591 U. S. ___ (2020); Re-
publican  National  Committee,  589  U. S.  ___.7    As  the 
—————— 

6 The concurrence is wrong to view that conclusion as casting doubt on 
all  similar  deadlines  in all  other  States.   See  ante, at  10.    The  district 
court rested its constitutional judgment, as I would too, on a confluence 
of factors: COVID conditions in Wisconsin, the scarce time between the 
State’s ballot-application and ballot-receipt deadlines, evidence about in-
state mail delivery and the administrative capacity of state election of-
fices.  See supra, at 2–3, 8–9.  In another State with all the same facts, 
the  same  result  should  obtain.    But  in  another  State  with  different 
facts—say, a less intense outbreak of COVID, an earlier ballot-applica-
tion deadline, faster mail delivery, and better staffed and funded election 
offices—the constitutional analysis should come out a different way.         
7  At  the  same  time  that  JUSTICE KAVANAUGH  defends  this  stance  by 
decrying a “federal-judges-know-best vision of election administration,” 
ante,  at  10,  he  calls  for  more  federal  court  involvement  in  “reviewing 
state-court decisions about state [election] law,” ante, at 9, n. 1.  It is hard 
to  know  how  to  reconcile  those  two  views  about  the  federal  judiciary’s 
role in voting-rights cases.  Contrary to JUSTICE KAVANAUGH’s attempted 
explanation, neither the text of the Elections Clause nor our precedent 
interpreting it leads to his inconstant approach.  See Arizona State Leg-
islature  v.  Arizona  Independent  Redistricting  Comm’n,  576  U.  S.  787, 
817–818 (2015); Smiley v. Holm, 285 U. S. 355, 372 (1932).