A federal appeals court ruled that a Texas law banning ballot harvesting is constitutional, reversing a lower court’s ruling and handing the Lone Star State a key victory for one of its major election integrity laws.
A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of Texas over the portion of Senate Bill 1, a 2021 law with various election provisions, that banned paid canvassers from submitting mail-in ballots for voters. The panel’s opinion, written by U.S. Circuit Judge Edith Jones, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, stated that the lower federal district court erred by ruling the law was unconstitutional on its face.
“Shoddy hypothetical analysis is not what our federalist system requires. ‘Under the federalist structure of the United States, the states are responsible for regulating the conduct of their elections,’” Jones wrote. “A federal district court’s intrusion on a state’s constitutional prerogative cannot be supported by mere speculation.”
“A challenger bears the weighty burden of demonstrating that the law is ‘impermissibly vague in all of its applications,’” Jones added. “The plaintiffs’ vagueness challenge fails this threshold test. As the district court conceded, applying the statute to ‘prevent paid partisans from haranguing Texas citizens while they fill out their mail ballots’ is not vague or unconstitutional.”
The panel also found the law is constitutional under the First Amendment, ruling it is “narrowly tailored to advance Texas’s compelling interests in election integrity.”
The appeals court panel had halted the district court’s ruling in October 2024 pending appeal, roughly two weeks after the lower court had struck down Texas’s ballot harvesting ban.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) celebrated the legal victory by saying the state “will win the fight to stop illegal voting & cheating at the ballot box,” while Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate in the GOP primary, called it a “major victory for election integrity.” The Republican National Committee, which intervened in the lawsuit supporting Texas, also celebrated the ruling.
“Voters should not have to fear coercion or abuse when receiving assistance casting their ballot. This ruling is another big win for statewide secure elections and for all Texas voters,” RNC chairman Joe Gruters said in a statement after the ruling.
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The ruling marks the latest court victory for the GOP in its battle over election laws across the country, including several involving late-arriving mail ballot deadlines. The RNC will be before the Supreme Court next month as it aims to convince the justices to strike down Mississippi’s late-arriving mail ballot law, which it claims violates federal law.
Arguments in Watson v. RNC will be held on March 23, with a ruling expected by the end of June. The ruling in the late-arriving ballots case will have ramifications for similar laws in roughly a dozen states ahead of the hotly contested midterm elections later this year.