The Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge by civil and voting rights groups seeking to overturn Pennsylvania’s requirement that mail-in ballots include a handwritten date on the outer envelope.
The groups argued that the mandate is unnecessary and has led to the disqualification of valid ballots. The justices refused to review a lower court ruling that upheld the requirement, rejecting the claim that it violated federal law, which prohibits discarding ballots for paperwork errors that are “not material” to determining a voter’s eligibility.
In 2024, the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that while the date requirement “serves little apparent purpose”—as it is not used to verify if a ballot was received on time—it remains lawful. The court reasoned that the 1964 Civil Rights Act applies to voter registration rules determining eligibility to vote, not to how a ballot must be submitted to be counted.
Pennsylvania, a critical swing state in presidential elections, again played a decisive role last year. Now-President Donald Trump carried the state over Democratic rival and now-former Vice President Kamala Harris in November, reversing his loss to then-President Joe Biden four years earlier.
The rule in question impacts mail-in voters in Pennsylvania, who are required to place their completed ballot in a secrecy envelope and then into an outer return envelope. On the return envelope, voters must sign and date a declaration affirming their eligibility to vote.
Plaintiffs, including the Pennsylvania State Conference of the NAACP, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued state and county election officials in 2022 under the materiality provision of the Civil Rights Act.
That language prohibits denying a person’s vote “because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under state law to vote.”
