Supreme Court Term 2025-2026

This lawsuit challenges HB 1569, a new law that will make New Hampshire the only state to require every person to produce documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote for both state and federal elections. It also challenges HB 1569’s elimination a preexisting protection for voters—namely, an affidavit option that allowed voters who faced surprise challenges to their eligibility at the polls to swear to their qualifications and cast a ballot. Accordingly, HB 1569 violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by placing substantial burdens on New Hampshirites at all stages of the voting process, and will arbitrarily disenfranchise hundreds, if not thousands of qualified voters.

Congressman Darrell Issa sued to prevent California from counting mail ballots postmarked by election day and received within the following seven days, consistent with California law. If successful, literally hundreds of thousands of Californians will be disenfranchised at each election. The ACLU and its three California affiliates have sought to intervene in the case on behalf of the League of Women Voters of California to ensure that California voters are able to have their ballots counted consistent with state procedures.

In 2020, in a nearly unanimous bipartisan vote, Mississippi joined eighteen other states in accepting mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrived after Election Day (in Mississippi’s case, up to five business days). This lawsuit by partisan actors seeks to disenfranchise these voters whose ballot is mailed by Election Day but—through no fault of their own—does not arrive until afterwards. In Mississippi, this harm will fall disproportionately on voters with disabilities, older voters, and other communities that rely upon absentee voting. Twisting the words and meaning of Congress, the RNC argues that three longstanding federal laws that set a uniform election day for federal races require that ballot may only be counted if they are received by election officials by Election Day. If accepted, this radical argument would not only disenfranchise thousands upon thousands of voters in Mississippi and thirty other states, but also upend election administration in every state.