Quite rightly too. We presume this is the SC that Mitch wants…
Law & Crime Reports
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with Alabama state officials seeking to prevent curbside voting, overturning two lower court decisions accommodating individuals with disabilities and underlying conditions that them particularly vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. The justices voted 5-3 to lift an injunction of the curbside voting ban, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining court’s conservative bloc and the liberal justices dissenting. While the majority did not include the legal reasoning underlying the decision, Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a brief yet biting dissent to the “shadow docket” ruling.
After Alabama prohibited counties from allowing curbside voting, a coalition of at-risk voters filed a lawsuit challenging the ban as a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). A federal district court agreed, halting the ban and implementing a policy that permitted, but did not require, counties to collect curbside ballots. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling, and the state filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court.
In her dissent, which was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, Sotomayor pointed out that the U.S. Department of Justice had previously come out in favor of curbside voting as a reasonable accommodation to remedy violations of the ADA, asserting that Alabama has no valid reason for prohibiting the process to those most vulnerable to the pandemic from being forced to vote indoors in a state with no mask requirement.
