OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a challenge from Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania to a controversial Biden administration executive order intended to boost voter registration.
The court rejected the Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers’ appeal of the order without providing a statement, arguing that it was an illegal attempt to influence the Nov. 5 election between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Lower courts had already dismissed the lawsuit.
President Joe Biden issued an executive order in March 2021 that specifically directed state officials and approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations to be “solicited and facilitated to provide voter registration services on agency premises.” Conservative lawmakers and organizations criticized this order for allegedly illegally using federal funds to boost Democratic voter turnout.
Pennsylvania Republicans based their motion to challenge the order on the “independent state legislature doctrine,” which holds that state legislatures have exclusive jurisdiction to regulate federal elections. Additionally, they contended that the executive order should be invalidated in light of the electors clause of the Constitution.
Chief Justice John Roberts, along with five other justices, rejected Republican lawmakers in North Carolina in a 2023 decision that addressed a variant of this issue.
“The Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review,” Roberts wrote in the case, known as Moore v. Harper.
“However, lawmakers in Pennsylvania said the Supreme Court still needed to determine “individual state legislator standing” over the challenge against the executive order. But the denial of the challenge is still a blow to other groups that have supported efforts for more transparency behind the executive order’s functions,” the Washington Examiner reported.
“Pro-Trump organizations such as America First Legal had called the Biden executive order “an unprecedented election interference program through the federal government’s agencies,” according to a statement in December 2023, which also noted that details of the plan were concealed due to an “unlawful” declaration of executive privilege,” the Examiner added.
Through litigation, AFL has persisted in its attempts to obtain additional understanding of the executive order’s strategic planning and how it organizes agencies for the aim of voter registration.
Back in September, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday reversed a lower court ruling and found that mail-in ballots with incorrect dates or without any dates on the exterior of the envelope cannot be counted, a huge win for election integrity advocates.
In a 4-3 decision, the state’s high court ruled on procedural grounds, stating that the lower court, which deemed the mandate unenforceable, should not have heard the case because it did not involve election boards from all 67 counties, The Associated Press reported.
In Pennsylvania, counties handle the administration of elections, but the left-leaning groups that filed the case had only sued two counties—Philadelphia and Allegheny.
Two weeks ago, the Commonwealth Court had halted the enforcement of handwritten dates on exterior envelopes.
The Supreme Court’s reversal of this decision now raises the possibility that thousands of ballots arriving on time could be discarded in a crucial swing state, potentially impacting the outcome of a closely contested presidential race. Many more Democrats vote by mail in the battleground state than do Republicans.
But Republican groups who appealed the decision applauded it as a big win for honesty in elections and a huge break for former President Donald Trump, who narrowly lost Pennsylvania to Joe Biden in 2020.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, in a release, called it a major victory for election integrity “that will protect commonsense mail ballot safeguards and help voters cast their ballots with confidence.”
Attorneys representing the ten left-wing ‘community’ organizations that filed the lawsuit stated that the decision left the door open for further litigation on the issue.
“Thousands of voters are at risk of having their ballots rejected in November for making a meaningless mistake,” said Mimi McKenzie, legal director of the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia. She urged voters to “carefully read and follow the instructions for submitting a mail-in ballot to reduce the number of ballots being rejected for trivial paperwork errors.”
Two Democratic appointees joined both Republican appointees on the Supreme Court in the ruling.
The lawsuit, filed in May, challenged the enforceability of the mandate based on a state constitutional provision ensuring that all elections are “free and equal,” the AP reported.
Recent elections in Pennsylvania suggest that more than 10,000 ballots in this year’s general election could be discarded due to incorrect or missing envelope dates—potentially influencing the outcome of the presidential race.
With Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes making it the largest prize among the seven swing states, this issue carries significant weight, the outlet added.
Historically, Pennsylvania has rejected ballots for missing dates or for dates that are clearly incorrect, such as those in the future or before mail-in ballots were printed.
While state law mandates dates on envelopes, election officials do not use them to determine the timeliness of ballots. Instead, mail-in ballots are logged and time-stamped upon receipt and must arrive at county election offices before the polls close on Election Day said the AP.