Little v. Reclaim Idaho
The Supreme Court blocked a lower court's order that had required Idaho to accept digitally collected signatures for a ballot initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic, likely preventing the initiative from appearing on the November 2020 ballot.
The ruling is temporary and does not settle whether states must adapt their ballot-initiative rules during public health emergencies — that question remains to be decided by the Ninth Circuit and potentially the Supreme Court on full review.
How it got here: A federal district court ordered Idaho to allow digital signature collection for a ballot initiative; the Ninth Circuit denied Idaho's request for a stay pending appeal; Idaho then applied directly to the Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Reclaim Idaho was working to place an initiative on Idaho's November 2020 ballot but could not gather enough in-person signatures because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A federal district court ordered Idaho to either accept the signatures already gathered or allow digital signature collection through a new online system. When Idaho refused both options, the court authorized a third-party vendor to build the system within nine days. Idaho argued the order commandeered state election infrastructure during an already strained election year.
The question before the Court
Should the Supreme Court step in and block a federal judge's order requiring Idaho to accept digital signatures on a ballot initiative petition during the COVID-19 pandemic, before the appeals court had finished reviewing the case?
The Court's answer
Yes — the Court granted Idaho's request to pause the district court's orders while Idaho's appeal proceeds. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for four justices in a concurrence explaining the Court's reasoning, concluded that Idaho satisfied all three requirements for a stay: there was a reasonable probability the Court would take up the case given a genuine and deepening split among federal appeals courts on whether the First Amendment requires states to relax ballot-initiative rules during the pandemic; a fair prospect Idaho would win on the merits, since states have wide discretion over the initiative process and neutral signature requirements are typically justified by anti-fraud and grassroots-support interests; and a real likelihood of irreparable harm, because the district court's order forced state and local officials to implement an entirely new digital-signature verification system on top of an already demanding pandemic-era election workload.
The stay takes effect immediately and will remain in place while the Ninth Circuit considers Idaho's appeal. If Idaho does not seek further Supreme Court review after the Ninth Circuit rules, the stay expires automatically.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Supporters of the Idaho ballot initiative will face severe difficulty collecting enough qualifying signatures for the November 2020 ballot now that the digital-collection window has been closed. More broadly, the order signals that states can insist on their standard signature-verification procedures even during a pandemic while courts continue to disagree about what the Constitution requires in such situations.
What changes now
The digital-signature collection effort is halted while Idaho's appeal proceeds in the Ninth Circuit, which was scheduled to hear the case on an expedited basis on August 11, 2020. If the Ninth Circuit rules against Idaho and Idaho seeks Supreme Court review, the stay continues until the Court acts. If certiorari is denied, the stay terminates automatically. Practically, Reclaim Idaho will face extreme difficulty collecting enough qualifying signatures to make the November 2020 ballot.
What this does not decide
The Court does not decide whether Idaho's signature requirements violate the First Amendment, or whether states are constitutionally required to accommodate pandemic-related obstacles to gathering ballot-initiative signatures. Those questions remain pending in the Ninth Circuit and may return to the Supreme Court on full merits review.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Roberts
Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, wrote separately to explain why each of the three stay requirements was met. He emphasized that the district court's order was unusually intrusive — effectively recasting the entire initiative process — and that the pandemic-era burdens on Idaho's election infrastructure as a whole deserved more weight than the lower court gave them. He also noted that Reclaim Idaho's own delay in seeking relief contributed to the time crunch.
Dissent — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ginsburg, argued the equities did not favor the State because the Ninth Circuit was poised to hear the expedited appeal in less than two weeks — well before Idaho needed to certify ballot questions. She contended the stay was premature, that the Court was bypassing the normal appellate process, and that by acting before the Ninth Circuit had fully considered the case the Court was undermining its own role as a court of review rather than first resort.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the standard three-part test for emergency stays: the party seeking a pause must show (1) a reasonable probability the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case, (2) a fair prospect the lower court's ruling will ultimately be reversed, and (3) a likelihood of irreparable harm if the stay is denied. Roberts, joined by four justices, walked through each factor and found the State had satisfied all three.
- On the first factor — likelihood of Supreme Court review — Roberts pointed to a genuine circuit split. The Sixth and Ninth Circuits hold that the First Amendment requires courts to scrutinize state ballot-initiative rules whenever they burden a person's ability to get an initiative on the ballot. The Seventh, Eighth, and Tenth Circuits hold the opposite: neutral procedural rules don't raise First Amendment concerns as long as political speech and signature-gathering aren't directly restricted. The pandemic has sharpened this split, with courts reaching opposite conclusions about whether states must adapt their processes.
- On the second factor — fair prospect of reversal — Roberts reasoned that nothing in the Constitution requires states to offer ballot initiatives at all, and that the sort of neutral signature requirements Idaho imposed are almost certainly justified by legitimate interests in preventing fraud and ensuring initiatives reflect genuine public support. Idaho's verification process is not a formality: county clerks reject 30–40% of signatures in the State's largest county.
- On the third factor — irreparable harm — Roberts found that the district court had underweighted the State's interest in managing limited election-administration resources. County clerks were already handling record absentee-ballot requests and other pandemic adaptations; forcing them to also learn a brand-new digital-signature verification system within nine days compounded those burdens without sufficient justification.
- On the balance of equities, Roberts concluded that while the stay might prevent the initiative from reaching the November ballot, Reclaim Idaho itself had delayed filing suit until more than a month after the signature deadline, contributing to the time crunch. The broader disruption to the State's entire election system outweighed the harm to the initiative sponsor.