Opinion ID: 4576942
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: An individual right

Text: We first examine whether the Twenty-Sixth Amendment confers an individual right to be free from any denial or abridgment of the right to vote. 18 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 19 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 We acknowledge this has not been an issue in the case, but we need to walk through the only recently developing analysis of this Amendment with care. The language and structure of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment mirror the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-Fourth Amendments. 5 Each of those amendments has been interpreted to provide an individual right to be free from the denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on the classification described in the Amendment. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits voting laws that “handicap exercise of the franchise” on account of race because the Amendment “nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of [racial] discrimination.” Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275 (1939). The Nineteenth Amendment “applies to men and women alike and by its own force supersedes inconsistent measures.” Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277, 283 (1937), overruled on other grounds by Harper v. Va. State Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 668–69 (1966). Likewise, the Twenty-Fourth Amendment provides a right to vote without paying a poll tax. Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, 540–41 (1965). These are Supreme Court interpretations of the 5 Compare U.S. Const. amend. XXVI, §§ 1–2 (“The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”), with U.S. Const. amend. XV, §§ 1–2 (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”), and U.S. Const. amend. XIX (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”), and U.S. Const. amend. XXIV, §§ 1–2 (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”). 19 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 20 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-Fourth Amendments predating the 1971 submission and ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. We hold that the Twenty-Sixth Amendment confers an individual right to be free from the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of age, the violation of which allows for pursuing a claim in court. We now turn to what denial and abridgment in this context mean. B. Scope of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment’s protection For Section 82.003 of the Texas Election Code to be constitutional, its granting to those at least 65 years of age an excuse-free right to a mail ballot cannot be a denial or abridgment of not-as-old voters’ right to vote, either facially or during the pandemic. Because we conclude that by definition no denial or abridgement has occurred, it is unnecessary for us to assess the applicable level of scrutiny to apply had there been either. On remand, the issue may arise. For that reason, we will discuss levels of scrutiny generally at the end of the opinion. As we search for the meaning of the key terms, we find direction from a time not too long ago when the Supreme Court began to give meaning to a different amendment long ignored in litigation as this one has been, namely, the Second. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). The Court considered how the words and phrases of that amendment had been used and interpreted in other constitutional provisions. Id. at 579–81. The Court wrote a lengthy exegesis of each significant term in the Second Amendment and its usage at the time of ratification. Id. at 579–95. That time was contemporaneous with the adoption of the Constitution itself. Among its lengthier explanations was the understanding at that time of “keep and bear Arms,” and each of the key words had a discernable late-Eighteenth-Century meaning. Id. at 581–92. A focus as well was how the same or at least similar terms that also appeared elsewhere in the Constitution had been interpreted. 20 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 21 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 For example, the Second Amendment’s phrase “right of the people” was held to guarantee an individual right to possess and carry a weapon in case of confrontation, id. at 592, at least in part because the same phrase used in other constitutional provisions “unambiguously refer[s] to individual rights.” Id. at 579. Similarly, in the statutory context, “there is a natural presumption that identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning.” Atl. Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v. United States, 286 U.S. 427, 433 (1932). Different here than in most statutory interpretation contexts, though, are the large gaps in time between the adoption of different amendments that use language similar to each other or to the original Constitution itself. Just as Heller examined such questions as what to “keep and bear arms” meant in the Founding Era, relevant for us is how broad or limited the phrase “right to vote” was interpreted at the time the Amendment was ratified. This will establish our baseline. That meaning is the context for the use of the phrase, and with “textual interpretation, context is everything.” Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law 37 (1997). Understanding what the right to vote meant at the time the TwentySixth Amendment was ratified in 1971 is certainly assisted by the 1969 McDonald decision. McDonald, 394 U.S. at 807–08. A definitive meaning of the right to vote and of denying that right could hardly have been given any closer to the time the Amendment was ratified. In McDonald, the Supreme Court held that denying mail-in ballots to incarcerated persons otherwise eligible to vote did not “deny appellants the exercise of the franchise.” Id. The Court explained that it was “thus not the right to vote that [was] at stake [t]here but a claimed right to receive absentee ballots.” Id. at 807. 21 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 22 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 We also consider some Congressional sources. Though we find no utility in examining the individual statements of various members of Congress who spoke to their beliefs — or perhaps only their hopes in guiding future interpretations — as to the meaning of the Amendment, we are willing to examine materials that accurately reflect what Congress was willing to adopt by joint action and present to a President who then was willing to register agreement. Enacted revisions to statutes are part of “statutory history,” not “the sort of unenacted legislative history that often is neither truly legislative (having failed to survive bicameralism and presentment) nor truly historical (consisting of advocacy aimed at winning in future litigation what couldn’t be won in past statutes).” BNSF Ry. Co. v. Loos, 139 S. Ct. 893, 906 (2019) (Gorsuch, J., dissenting). Congress did not in this instance revise earlier enacted legislation by passing a new bill. Instead, after the Supreme Court invalidated part of its earlier effort, Congress revised by proposing a constitutional amendment through proper bicameral procedures, then presented it to the states where it was ratified. We explain. The Voting Rights Act was adopted in 1965 to ensure that the right to vote would not be denied or abridged on account of race or color. See 52 U.S.C. § 10301. In the 1970 renewal of the Act, Congress decided to broaden the franchise in another way — by lowering the voting age to eighteen. See Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112, 117 (1970). The 1970 amendments imposed the change this way: “Except as required by the Constitution, no citizen of the United States who is otherwise qualified to vote in any State or political subdivision in any primary or in any election shall be denied the right to vote in any such primary or election on account of age if such citizen is eighteen 22 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 23 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 years of age or older.” 6 The slogan for some who urged this change was “old enough to fight, old enough to vote,” 7 an allusion to the young members of the American military serving in Vietnam. Perhaps Congress was willing to hazard lowering the voting age by legislation even for state elections because the Supreme Court had upheld the 1965 Voting Right Act’s ban on use of literacy tests based on Congress’s Fifteenth Amendment enforcement power. See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301 (1966). Lowering the voting age by federal statute for all elections, though, could not be supported by the same arguments. The Court in December 1970 held that the 1970 amendment to the Voting Rights Act setting the voting age at eighteen was within Congress’s power with respect to federal elections but not as to state and local elections. Mitchell, 400 U.S. at 117–18. 8 At the time, forty-seven states recognized the right to vote beginning at an age higher than eighteen. Eric S. Fish, Note, The TwentySixth Amendment Enforcement Power, 121 YALE L.J. 1168, 1193 (2012). The Twenty-Sixth Amendment followed immediately. Approved by Congress in March of 1971 and ratified by June, the Amendment was the most quickly ratified constitutional amendment in our history. Id. at 1194–95. This is some indication that the Twenty-Sixth Amendment was at least perceived 6 Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, Pub. L. No. 91-285, § 302, 84 Stat. 314, 318, invalidated in part by Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112, 117–18 (1970). 7 Nancy Turner, Comment, The Young and the Restless: How the Twenty-Sixth Amendment Could Play a Role in the Current Debate over Voting Laws, 64 Am. U. L. Rev. 1503, 1508 (2015). 8 Debate on the Voting Rights Act Amendments may have altered the makeup of the Court that would by a 5–4 vote limit the voting-age change. The Judiciary Committee favorably reported Fifth Circuit Judge G. Harrold Carswell’s nomination to the Supreme Court in February 1970, but the Senate gave precedence to considering the amendments in March, a delay that some contend is what allowed opposition to organize and defeat his confirmation in April. Richard Harris, Decision 84, 108, 200–02 (1971). 23 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 24 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 as having a narrower sweep than the other constitutional amendments affecting voting, which in this instance was to fulfill what Congress tried but failed to do in 1970 in lowering the voting age for all elections. We also look at details of absentee voting nationwide, data that was provided to Congress when it was considering the 1970 Voting Rights Act Amendments as well as what became the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. One 1973 review of the election laws, apparently mirroring but updating research provided to Congress in 1968–69, showed there was much variation. 9 In 1968, only two states were providing a special privilege for older voters to cast absentee ballots; by 1973, there were four. 10 There were other differences: Maine has the most sweeping statute; it provides that any registered voter may cast an absentee ballot. Presumably, those who are able to vote in person do so, but the statute does not require applicants for absentee ballots to demonstrate an inability to reach the polls. In all other states, voters who wish 9 Note, The Submerged Constitutional Right to an Absentee Ballot, 72 Mich. L. Rev. 157, 159–61 (1973). Similar data through 1969 was prepared for Congress as shown in the record of Senate hearings cited in the article. Id. at 158 n.3. That data provides the absentee-voting landscape from each state based on two compilations by the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress. Amendments to the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Constitutional Rights of the Comm. on the Judiciary on S. 818, S. 2456, S. 2507, and Title IV of S. 2029, 91st Cong., 1st & 2d Sess. 292–93 (1969–70) (citing Elizabeth Yadlosky, Legis. Reference Serv., 69–226A, Absentee Registration and Voting: Digests of Major Provisions of the Laws of the Fifty States and the District of Columbia (1969), and Elizabeth Yadlosky, Legis. Reference Serv., A–243, Election Laws of the Fifty States and the District of Columbia (1968)). Our thanks to Stuart Carmody of the Congressional Research Service — with Ryan Annison of Senator Roger Wicker’s staff as liaison — and to Fifth Circuit Librarians Judy Reedy, Peggy Mitts, and Susan Jones for diligently seeking and obtaining these two long-buried documents. 10 Submerged Constitutional Right, supra note 9, at 161 n.18 (Arizona, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Wyoming in 1973); Election Laws of the Fifty States and the District of Columbia, supra note 9, at 128, 221 (Michigan and Rhode Island in 1968). 24 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 25 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 to cast an absentee ballot must demonstrate that they fall within a statutory classification. Although most states provide absentee ballots in all elections, four restrict their use to general elections. In many states, eligibility is determined by the voter’s actual distance from his home. The majority of states require absence from the county of the voter’s residence; others require absence from the state, the city, or the precinct. Some absentee-ballot legislation encompasses classes of voters who are within the election district but cannot reach the polls. Almost all states allow the physically incapacitated to cast absentee ballots. Some also furnish absentee ballots to students, to election workers stationed at precincts other than their own, to persons over sixty-five years of age, and to persons whose religious beliefs prevent them from attending the polls on election day. 11 Other variants among the states were permitting absentee voting for those who participated in the election process itself, or whose religious tenets prevented attendance at the polls. 12 Though this data provided to Congress when considering the 1970 and 1971 enactments indicate that almost all states at the time of submission of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment permitted absentee voting by those who were temporarily removed from proximity to their polls, there was much variation — being absent from the precinct, city, county, or state. 13 Those variations 11 Submerged Constitutional Right, supra note 9, at 159–61 (footnotes omitted). 12 Some states allowed absentee voting for election workers. Election Laws of the Fifty States and the District of Columbia, supra note 9, at 52 (Florida); id. at 74 (Illinois); id. at 128 (Michigan). Others allowed absentee voting for religious reasons. Id. at 25 (California); id. at 36–37 (Connecticut); id. at 275 (Wisconsin). Many single-state variations existed, such as Mississippi’s allowing absentee voting for those engaged in transportation as a driver, operator, or crewman. Id. at 137. 13 Submerged Constitutional Right, supra note 9, at 160. 25 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 26 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 were eliminated in part by the 1970 Voting Rights Act Amendments: “[E]ach State shall provide by law for the casting of absentee ballots for . . . President and Vice President . . . by all duly qualified residents of such State who may be absent from their election district or unit in such State on the day such election is held and who have applied therefor not later than seven days immediately prior to such election,” then who timely return their ballots. See Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, Pub. L. No. 91-285, § 202, 84 Stat. 314, 316–17, codified as 52 U.S.C. § 10502(d). The Mitchell Court upheld this standardization of the right to an absentee ballot in presidential elections, and it remains the law today. Mitchell, 400 U.S. at 119. The significance we give to this status quo for absentee voting at the time of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment is that, despite all the variations in the states, the only congressional insistence in the Voting Rights Act Amendments, which included a provision lowering the voting age for all elections, was to give all voters who were going to be absent on election day a right to vote absentee for a presidential ticket. Deciding whether the Twenty-Sixth Amendment should be interpreted as doing even more is informed by this statutory history. The Supreme Court distinguished between a right to vote and a right to vote absentee: “It is thus not the right to vote that is at stake here but a claimed right to receive absentee ballots.” McDonald, 394 U.S. at 807. Judge Ho was correct when concurring to the entry of a stay during the pendency of this appeal when he wrote: “For nearly a century, mail-in voting has been the exception — and in-person voting the rule — in Texas.” Tex. Democratic Party, 961 F.3d at 414 (Ho, J., concurring). In summary, the right to vote in 1971 did not include a right to vote by mail. In-person voting was the rule, absentee voting the exception. Though we identify this historical context for the Amendment, certainly our 26 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 27 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 imperative is to focus on the text. “Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.” Bostock v. Clayton Cnty., 140 S. Ct. 1731, 1737 (2020). Even “small gestures can have unexpected consequences,” id., which is relevant when considering whether the nearly forgotten TwentySixth Amendment invalidates any age-based limitation on voting today. We now consider when the right to vote is “denied” or “abridged.”
Before ratification, the Supreme Court held that the right to vote was not “denied” where there was no indication that the challengers were “in fact absolutely prohibited from voting.” McDonald, 394 U.S. at 807–08 & n.7. After ratification, the Court held that a person’s right to vote is denied when an election law “absolutely prohibits them from voting.” Goosby v. Osser, 409 U.S. 512, 521 (1971). Under the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, then, “denied” means “prohibited.” There has been no denial here.
To abridge is “[t]o reduce or diminish.” Abridge, Black’s Law Dictionary 7 (10th ed. 2014). Evaluating whether there has been a denial of a right will rarely involve a comparison. On the other hand, “[i]t makes no sense to suggest that a voting practice ‘abridges’ the right to vote without some baseline with which to compare the practice.” Reno v. Bossier Parish Sch. Bd., 528 U.S. 320, 334 (2000). More, later, on Bossier Parish. We are not focused today on how important that right is, but it is one of importance, central to a democratic system. Instead, we are seeking a clear understanding of the right itself, from which we then can determine whether something the government has done in its election rules has abridged the right. The plaintiffs insist that an abridgment occurs any time a new election law makes voting more difficult for one age group than it is for another. 27 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 28 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 Under that construct, when Texas in 1975 legislated a privilege for older voters to cast absentee votes without needing to claim a reason such as being out of the county, it abridged younger voters’ rights even though no change was made as to them. 14 In essence, a new baseline for voting arises with each new election rule. If some category of voters has more limited rights after the change in comparison to other categories, an abridgement has occurred. Our first reaction is that this seems an implausible reading of “abridge.” Conceptually, plaintiffs are converting the Twenty-Sixth Amendment into the positive assertion that voting rights must be identical for all age groups at all times. Any indulgence solely for one age group of voters would fail; voters of all ages must get the same indulgence. 15 The Amendment, though, is a prohibition against adopting rules based on age that deny or abridge the rights voters already have. Indeed, neither the TwentySixth Amendment nor the related amendments we have been discussing are written in terms of granting a positive right to vote. Instead, they each are phrased in the negative, namely, that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged based on the relevant reason. See David Schultz, Election Law and Democratic Theory 87 (2016). More consistent with the text of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment is for us to evaluate whether younger voters’ rights were reduced by the addition of a privilege for older voters. The point just made, though, needs to take into account a possible exception. We return to the Bossier Parish decision concerning the Fifteenth Amendment. After stating that a baseline for measuring abridgements was 14 Addressed later is the specific assertion in support of the preliminary injunction that the privilege abridges the younger voters’ right in the context of the pandemic. 15 We borrow the term “indulgence” from Justice Scalia, who used it to refer to accommodations offered to some but not all voters based on a perceived special need. Crawford v. Marion Cnty. Election Bd., 553 U.S. 181, 209 (2008) (Scalia, J., concurring). 28 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 29 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 necessary, the Court continued by distinguishing two parts of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 proceedings, the since-invalidated requirement that certain states had to preclear any election law changes with the Department of Justice, “uniquely deal only and specifically with changes in voting procedures.” Bossier Parish, 528 U.S. at 334 (emphasis omitted). On the other hand, challenges to voting practices generally, i.e., not necessarily a recent change, under Section 2 of the Act or under the Fifteenth Amendment, had a broader reach: In § 2 or Fifteenth Amendment proceedings, by contrast, which involve not only changes but (much more commonly) the status quo itself, the comparison must be made with a hypothetical alternative: If the status quo “results in [an] abridgement of the right to vote” or “abridge[s] [the right to vote]” relative to what the right to vote ought to be, the status quo itself must be changed. Id. The Court then stated that “abridging” for purposes of the Fifteenth Amendment refers to discrimination more generally, not just to retrogression. Id. That certainly makes sense, as litigation under the Fifteenth Amendment went far beyond just challenging recent changes but sought to dismantle longstanding discrimination in voting. Even if this concept applies to the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, i.e., that abridging goes beyond just looking at the change but also at the validity of the state’s voting rules generally, we see no basis to hold that Texas’s absentee-voting rules as a whole are something that ought not to be. Secondly, we examine the two Supreme Court decisions on which plaintiffs rely in defining “abridge” in this manner. The earlier of the opinions used the Fifteenth Amendment to invalidate an Oklahoma voter registration system. Lane, 307 U.S. at 270, 275. When Oklahoma was admitted as a state in 1907, it imposed a literacy test that, because of how it 29 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 30 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 was administered, effectively denied most black Oklahomans the right to vote. Id. at 269. The test was invalidated by the Supreme Court. Id. Oklahoma then devised a registration system providing that those who voted in the 1914 Oklahoma elections remained eligible thereafter, but those who had been eligible and failed to vote had to register within a 12-day window in 1916. Id. at 271. Thus, voters who had been eligible in 1914 had much different rules applied to them depending on their race. White voters who had not been subject to barriers of law or custom in 1914 remained eligible to vote, while black voters had a registration window that briefly opened, then closed tight. The plaintiff was a black potential voter who had been old enough but failed to register in 1916; in 1934, he was rejected when he sought to register. Id. The Court invalidated the registration scheme, explaining that the Fifteenth Amendment prohibits “onerous procedural requirements which effectively handicap exercise of the franchise.” Id. at 275. Plaintiffs latch on to the phrase “effectively handicap,” but we fail to see that when Texas granted a privilege to older voters, it was reducing or handicapping the rights of younger voters. It failed to enhance rights for younger voters, but that is not the equivalent of abridging. Three decades later, the Supreme Court held that Virginia abridged the right to vote in violation of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment when voters were required to choose between paying a poll tax or filing a certificate of residence. Forssenius, 380 U.S. at 531–33. Somewhat similarly to the Oklahoma response to invalidating literacy tests, Virginia adopted the alternatives because of the imminent prohibition of poll taxes for federal elections by the Twenty-Fourth Amendment. Id. at 531. Under the new state law, someone wishing to vote in a federal election could either pay the poll tax applicable to state elections or instead file every election year at least “six months before the election, a notarized or witnessed certificate attesting that they have been continuous residents of the State since the date of registration 30 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 31 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 (which might have been many years before under Virginia’s system of permanent registration) and that they do not presently intend to leave the city or county.” Id. at 541. The Court held that to demonstrate the invalidity of the measure, “it need only be shown that it imposes a material requirement solely upon those who refuse to surrender their constitutional right to vote in federal elections without paying a poll tax.” Id. The Twenty-Fourth Amendment eliminated “all requirements impairing the right to vote in federal elections by reason of failure to pay the poll tax,” and Virginia could not impose the tax even just as an alternative. Id. at 544. Forssenius invalidated the law requiring voters choose between paying an unconstitutional tax or engaging in an onerous registration. The plaintiffs emphasize the Court’s calling the registration an invalid “material requirement,” but here, too, the plaintiffs seek more than can be found in one of the Court’s opinions. The Twenty-Fourth Amendment provides that the right to vote in federal elections “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.” When Virginia imposed a material requirement of registration within a certain time period prior to every election, it did not grant a privilege to one class of voters while leaving other classes untouched. It was mandating that every voter either pay the poll tax or register. It was unconstitutional to require that choice. Rejecting the plaintiffs’ arguments, we hold that an election law abridges a person’s right to vote for the purposes of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment only if it makes voting more difficult for that person than it was before the law was enacted or enforced. As the Court has held, the “core meaning” of “abridge” is to “shorten,” and shortening “necessarily entails a comparison.” Bossier Parish, 528 U.S. at 333–34. Abridgment of the right to vote applies to laws that place a barrier or prerequisite to voting, or otherwise make it more difficult to vote, relative to the baseline. 31 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 32 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 On the other hand, a law that makes it easier for others to vote does not abridge any person’s right to vote for the purposes of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. That is not to say that a state may always enact such a law, but it does not violate the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. Sophisticated attempts to circumvent this rule could arise. The Supreme Court, though, has these constitutional amendments “nullif[y] sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of impairing the right guaranteed.” See Forssenius, 380 U.S. at 540–41 (quotation marks omitted). Courts will be able to respond properly to any artful efforts. We now examine some of the caselaw urged upon us by the plaintiffs. We have discussed Lane and Forssenius already and concluded they do not counsel a different approach. We now review some other decisions in which other courts considered claimed violations of the Fifteenth, Twenty-Fourth, or Twenty-Sixth Amendments. Soon after the Twenty-Sixth Amendment was ratified, the Supreme Court of California held that California’s registration rule that compelled young voters living apart from their parents to retain their parents’ voting residence violated the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. Jolicoeur v. Mihaly, 488 P.2d 1, 2 (Cal. 1971). That decision is not binding on this court, but we examine it for its persuasive value. The court held that the word “abridge” was defined as to “diminish, curtail, deprive, cut off, [or] reduce.” Id. at 4. The registration rule compelled the newly enfranchised voters either to travel to their parents’ district to register and vote, or to vote by absentee. Id. The court held that it was “clear” that the law “abridged petitioners’ right to vote in precisely one of the ways that Congress sought to avoid — by singling minor voters out for special treatment and effectively making many of them vote by absentee ballot.” Id. at 7. Unlike the generally older voters who were not in college, these students could not register to vote where they lived. We agree with Jolicoeur to the extent it means that a voting scheme that adds barriers primarily for younger 32 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 33 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 voters constitutes an abridgement due to age. We also consider a decision by the Supreme Court of Colorado, which held that the Twenty-Sixth Amendment applied to participation in a ballotinitiative process. Colo. Project-Common Cause v. Anderson, 495 P.2d 220, 222–23 (Colo. 1972). The court invalidated a law that prevented persons younger than twenty-one from signing and circulating petitions. Id. at 223. Although this case did not involve voting, the suit did involve prohibiting political participation based on age. We do not necessarily endorse using the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in this context, but the Colorado court’s doing so does not create a result contrary to our holding here. The final decision we examine is one that the district court cited in the present case. See United States v. Texas, 445 F. Supp. 1245 (S.D. Tex. 1978), aff’d sub nom. Symm v. United States, 439 U.S. 1105 (1979). The 1978 district court opinion applied strict scrutiny to a claim under the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. Texas, 445 F. Supp. at 1261. There, a local county clerk refused to allow college students to register to vote, effectively disenfranchising 973 of the 1000 applicants. Id. at 1249. The district court held that this refusal violated the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. The invalidation of this practice is consistent with our analysis, but lesser scrutiny would have reached the same outcome. Further, the Supreme Court’s summary affirmance of the district court’s result is not a summary endorsement of the district court’s reasoning. We hold, based on the meaning of the word “abridged,” that the right to vote under the Twenty-Sixth Amendment is not abridged unless the challenged law creates a barrier to voting that makes it more difficult for the challenger to exercise her right to vote relative to the status quo, or unless the status quo itself is unconstitutional. Thus, conferring a privilege on one category of voters does not alone violate the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. 33 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 34 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 C. The Texas Election Code and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment It has taken much discussion, but we finally arrive at the dispositive question: Does Section 82.003 of the Texas Election Code deny or abridge the plaintiffs’ voting rights during the pandemic? The statutory background for voting in Texas prior to election day is the following. Early voting was first permitted in 1917. In re Texas, 602 S.W.3d at 558. Gradually adding classes of voters to those who qualify for absentee voting, the state did not extend no-excuse absentee voting to persons 65 and older until 1975, after the adoption of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. Id. (citing Act of May 30, 1975, 64th Leg., R.S., ch. 682, § 5, 1975 Tex. Gen. Laws 2080, 2082). This right is now codified in the challenged Section 82.003. For all the reasons we already have discussed, the Texas Legislature’s conferring a privilege to those at least age 65 to vote absentee did not deny or abridge younger voters’ rights who were not extended the same privilege. Thus, Section 82.003 itself does not violate the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. We now consider if the pandemic affects the validity of that age-based privilege. We start with what the Texas Supreme Court stated regarding the extent of that state’s adjustment of its election rules during the pandemic. That court held that “a voter can take into consideration aspects of his health and his health history that are physical conditions in deciding whether, under the circumstances, to apply to vote by mail because of disability.” Id. at 560. Further, “elected officials have placed in the hands of the voter the determination of whether in-person voting will cause a likelihood of injury due to a physical condition.” Id. at 561. The “lack of immunity to COVID19, without more, is not a ‘disability’ as defined by the Election Code.” Id. at 550. Although “lack of immunity” alone is not a Section 82.002 disability, In re Texas shows that voters with an underlying physical condition making them more vulnerable to the virus, rather than fear of COVID-19 alone, may 34 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 35 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 apply to vote by mail under that section. This undermines the plaintiffs’ asapplied argument because at-risk voters of any age can utilize the Texas Election Code’s disability provision to mitigate the risk of COVID-19. The record indicates Texas is taking the kinds of precautions for voting that are being used in other endeavors during the pandemic. None of them guarantees protection. There are quite reasonable concerns about voting in person, but Texas’s mandating that many continue to vote in that way does not amount to an absolute prohibition of the right to vote. As to abridgement, voters under age 65 did not have no-excuse absentee voting prior to the pandemic. Further, requiring many to vote in person during this crisis, with safety measures being imposed and some flexibility as to “disability” being shown, does not amount to an unconstitutional status quo. The real issue here is equal protection, and that is not before us. We will remand. Before we send this case on its way, we pause to discuss the concept of levels of scrutiny. The decision in June to grant a stay in this case was based on a holding that “employing McDonald’s logic leads inescapably to the conclusion that rational-basis review applies.” Tex. Democratic Party, 961 F.3d at 409 (citing McDonald, 394 U.S. at 807–08). The Supreme Court’s 1969 McDonald opinion, predating the 1971 Amendment at the center of our analysis, was a challenge by pretrial detainees who were either charged with nonbailable offenses or could not afford bail. McDonald, 394 U.S. at 803. They had no right under Illinois law to an absentee ballot due to their detention, despite that they had not been convicted of the charged offenses. Id. The claim was that the state made an arbitrary distinction, violative of equal protection, between those physically incapacitated by illness who could vote absentee and those judicially incapacitated who could not. Id. at 806. The Court concluded that no heightened scrutiny was needed because the state’s distinction did not “impact” the detainees’ “fundamental right to vote.” Id. at 807. The right 35 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 36 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 to vote had not been denied because there was no evidence that Illinois would not provide alternative means for the detainees to vote, as the state might “furnish the jails with special polling booths or facilities on election day, or provide guarded transportation to the polls themselves for certain inmates,” or offer other options. Id. at 808 & n.6. We are hesitant to hold that McDonald applies. One reason is that the decision predated the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which means it did not consider the potential — argued by the plaintiffs here — that the Amendment requires the same heightened analysis as McDonald stated applied to classifications based on race and wealth. See id. at 807. Further, the Court seemed to analyze only whether the challenged action “den[ied] appellants the exercise of the franchise.” Id. at 807–08. The Twenty-Sixth Amendment prohibits age-based denials but also abridgments of the right to vote. In addition, the Supreme Court interpreted a post-McDonald limitation on absentee voting as potentially violative of equal protection even though, like the statute in McDonald, it left open other options for voting. Am. Party of Tex. v. White, 415 U.S. 767, 794–95 (1974) (discussing McDonald). No party’s brief cited American Party either to the motions panel or to us, and only an amicus brought it to our attention. There has been no denial or abridgement of a right to vote under the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. On remand, equal protection questions may come to the fore. Though we cannot, in the current posture of this appeal, decide the issue of the proper scrutiny to give to this statutory provision under equal protection analysis, we need to take one further step so the issue can be considered on remand in light of this opinion. Before granting a stay, the motions panel had to decide the likelihood of the defendants’ success on appeal on each of the grounds on which the district court relied in issuing a preliminary injunction. It held both that McDonald applied and that rationalbasis review was appropriate. In our more limited opinion today, though, by 36 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 37 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407 concluding that no denial or abridgment of the right to vote under the Twenty-Sixth Amendment ever occurred, we had no denial or abridgement to scrutinize. We have uncertainties about McDonald and do not wish that the earlier necessity for a preliminary decision on the merits by the motions panel control the remand on an issue we never reached. We therefore use our authority as the panel resolving the merits to declare that the holdings in the motions panel opinion as to McDonald are not precedent. To be clear, we are not stating, even as dicta, that rational basis scrutiny is incorrect. Indeed, age-based distinctions are evaluated in that manner in the usual case. See Mass. Bd. of Retirement v. Murgia, 427 U.S. 307, 312 (1976). On the other hand, some courts have applied what is known as the Anderson-Burdick balancing analysis to claims that an election law violates equal protection, and they provide noteworthy reasons for doing so. See, e.g., Luft v. Evers, 963 F.3d 665, 671 (7th Cir. 2020) (citing Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780 (1983), and Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428 (1992)). The right level of scrutiny for an equal protection claim on remand is for the district court initially to analyze. An answer now by us would be only dicta. Even so, we state that we have not seen any authority to support that it would require strict scrutiny as the district court initially applied. In sum, the plaintiffs claim that the Twenty-Sixth Amendment prohibits allowing voters who are at least 65 years old to vote by mail without excuse. This claim fails because conferring a benefit on another class of voters does not deny or abridge the plaintiffs’ Twenty-Sixth Amendment right to vote. The preliminary injunction was not properly granted on the plaintiffs’ Twenty-Sixth Amendment claim as it has been defended here. We VACATE the injunction and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 37 Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515602091 Page: 38 Date Filed: 10/14/2020 No. 20-50407