{"id":231189,"date":"2026-06-29T19:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T19:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/231189\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T19:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T19:45:08","slug":"signals-point-to-us-supreme-court-taking-on-pennsylvania-mail-ballot-date-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/231189\/","title":{"rendered":"Signals Point to US Supreme Court Taking On Pennsylvania Mail Ballot Date Dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You knew it would come to this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The United States Supreme Court is signaling that it will take on Pennsylvania\u2019s mail ballot date dispute in its next term.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The court allowed Michael T. Morley of Florida State University\u2019s Election Law Center to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/DocketPDF\/25\/25-967\/400975\/20260316124753895_25-962-25-967_Motion_%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">submit an amicus brief<\/a> arguing for granting review and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/orders\/courtorders\/062926zor_1bn2.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">invited the U.S. Solicitor General to file a brief<\/a> \u201cexpressing the views of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In doing so, the move gives a strong indication that the Supreme Court will take up <a href=\"https:\/\/www.democracydocket.com\/cases\/pennsylvania-undated-and-wrongly-dated-mail-in-ballots-challenge-eakin\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Eakin v. Adams County Board of Elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The road map for Eakin has been a long and winding one.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On March 31, 2025, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Paradise Baxter, a Trump appointee, found that the state\u2019s date requirement for mail-in ballot <a href=\"https:\/\/politicspa.com\/federal-court-rules-pas-date-requirement-for-mail-in-ballots-violates-first-and-14th-amendments\/141095\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">violates the First and 14th Amendments<\/a>. In August, the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals <a href=\"https:\/\/politicspa.com\/court-rules-pennsylvania-must-count-undated-mail-in-ballots\/142413\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">upheld that decision<\/a> in an opinion written by Judge D. Brooks Smith, a George W. Bush appointee.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In January, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a 2022 federal\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.democracydocket.com\/cases\/pennsylvania-undated-and-wrongly-dated-mail-in-ballots-challenge-pa-naacp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0led by the Pennsylvania State Conference of the NAACP alleging that the practice of disqualifying mail-in ballots on the basis of handwritten date errors violates the Civil Rights Act\u2019s Materiality Provision.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In February, the RNC and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania asked the Supreme Court to review the case. And it appears that is getting closer to becoming reality.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As \u201cAmerica\u2019s Swing State,\u201d Pennsylvania has become one of the most pivotal states in the Union in determining the outcome of presidential elections.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The requirement that Pennsylvanians who vote by mail must place their secret ballot into an outer return envelope, sign and date, has become a hotly-contested issue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The RNC and Republican Party of Pennsylvania said that ballot requirement caused officials to discard more than 10,000 ballots in the 2022 general election and 4,500 two years later, even after a ballot envelope redesign.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In March, President Donald Trump issed an executive order to restrict mail-in ballots nationwide, but a federal judge in Boston <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/judge-blocks-trump-executive-order-mail-in-voting\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">blocked its implementation<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You knew it would come to this. The United States Supreme Court is signaling that it will take&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-231189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}