Democratic National Committee v. Wisconsin State Legislature
The Supreme Court refused to reinstate a lower court order that would have extended Wisconsin's deadline for receiving absentee ballots from Election Day to six days later, keeping the state's original deadline in place for the November 2020 election.
The decision reaffirmed that federal courts should not rewrite state election rules close to an election, and that state legislatures — not judges — have primary authority to decide how to handle voting rules during the COVID-19 pandemic.
How it got here: A federal district court extended Wisconsin's absentee ballot receipt deadline; the Seventh Circuit stayed that order; the Democratic National Committee applied to the Supreme Court to vacate the stay and reinstate the district court's order.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The Democratic National Committee challenged Wisconsin's requirement that absentee ballots be received by Election Day, not merely postmarked by then. A federal district court, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and mail delays, extended the deadline to allow ballots postmarked by November 3 to be received up to November 9. The case arose weeks before the 2020 presidential election, when over 1.7 million Wisconsin voters had already requested mail-in ballots.
The question before the Court
Should the Supreme Court reinstate a federal judge's order extending Wisconsin's deadline for receiving mail-in ballots by six days, over the objection of state officials and eight days before the 2020 presidential election?
The Court's answer
No — the Court refused to reinstate the District Court's extension of Wisconsin's absentee ballot receipt deadline. The Court applied the Purcell principle — the rule that federal courts should not alter state election rules close to an election — finding that the District Court had no business rewriting Wisconsin's laws just six weeks before the November election, after absentee voting had already begun. That alone was enough to keep the Seventh Circuit's stay in place.
Two additional, independent reasons supported the same result: First, state legislatures, not unelected federal judges, have primary responsibility for deciding how to run elections during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Wisconsin's decision not to change its rules deserved the same judicial deference as another state's decision to change them. Second, Wisconsin's election-day deadline is shared by approximately 30 other states and passes the standard constitutional test for voting rules — voters who miss reasonable deadlines are not constitutionally disenfranchised.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Wisconsin voters were required to ensure their absentee ballots arrived by Election Day, November 3, 2020. An estimated tens of thousands of ballots postmarked before Election Day but arriving after it would not be counted. The ruling also signaled that courts would not second-guess roughly 30 other states with identical election-day receipt deadlines.
What changes now
Wisconsin's election-day deadline for receiving absentee ballots remained in force for the November 3, 2020 presidential election. The ruling did not resolve the underlying lawsuit on the merits; it decided only that the District Court's last-minute injunction should not have been issued and that the Seventh Circuit was correct to stay it. The broader litigation could continue in lower courts after the election.
What this does not decide
The order does not decide whether Wisconsin's election rules are lawful in general or whether the state's deadline is constitutional on the merits. It decides only that a federal court should not have changed those rules so close to Election Day, and that the state legislature — not the courts — has authority to weigh those tradeoffs.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Kavanaugh
Justice Kavanaugh concurred to explain three independent grounds for denying the application: the Purcell principle barring last-minute judicial rewrites of election rules, the limited and deferential role of federal courts in COVID-19 policy decisions belonging to state legislatures, and the constitutional permissibility of reasonable election deadlines under the Anderson-Burdick framework. He also rebutted the dissent's disenfranchisement argument in detail, noting that Wisconsin had taken extensive steps to help voters meet the deadline and that over one million voters had already returned their ballots.
Dissent — Justice Kagan
Justice Kagan would have reinstated the District Court's order extending the ballot-receipt deadline to November 9. Applying the Anderson-Burdick balancing test, she concluded that Wisconsin's election-day deadline imposed an unreasonable burden on voters during the pandemic given mail delays and the surge in absentee voting. She predicted that tens of thousands — possibly up to 100,000 — ballots postmarked by Election Day would go uncounted under the original deadline.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Purcell principle — the rule that federal courts ordinarily must not alter state election laws in the period close to an election — barred the District Court's last-minute rewrite of Wisconsin's ballot-receipt deadline. The rationale is practical: changing rules on the eve of an election confuses voters, burdens election administrators, and undermines public confidence in results. When a district court violates Purcell, appellate courts must step in and correct it; doing so is not itself a Purcell problem.
- Even apart from timing, the Constitution assigns primary responsibility for balancing health and safety tradeoffs during the pandemic to politically accountable state legislatures, not unelected federal judges who lack the background and expertise to assess public health conditions. A state legislature's decision either to change or to keep its existing election rules in light of COVID-19 deserves broad judicial deference — Wisconsin's choice to retain its deadline is entitled to the same deference the Court gave South Carolina when it decided to keep its rules.
- Under the Anderson-Burdick balancing framework — the standard constitutional test for voting regulations, drawn from two earlier Supreme Court cases — a state's reasonable election deadline does not substantially burden the right to vote. Voters who miss a deadline due to their own failure to act in time are not disenfranchised; they need to meet the deadline, just as any reasonable deadline requires. The proper constitutional question is not whether any voter might ever miss a deadline, but whether the deadline is reasonable under all the circumstances.
- Wisconsin had taken extensive steps to accommodate the surge in absentee voting: it mailed ballot applications to 2.6 million registered voters, set up drop boxes and drive-through absentee sites, allowed in-person absentee voting for two weeks before Election Day, and repeatedly urged voters to request and return ballots early. Over 1.3 million completed ballots had already been returned, and in-person voting remained a safe fallback option for those who did not receive their absentee ballots in time.
- The dissent's prediction that tens of thousands of ballots would go uncounted rested on statistics from the April primary — when the deadline had been extended, so voters had less incentive to act quickly — and did not reflect how voters behave when they know a firm election-day deadline applies. The dissent's 'disenfranchisement' framing was also self-defeating: even under the dissent's preferred extension, ballots arriving after November 9 or mailed after November 3 still would not count, illustrating that any deadline system will leave some late ballots uncounted.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Purcell v. Gonzalez (549 U. S. 1)
The principle barring federal courts from altering state election rules close to an election is reaffirmed and applied to block the District Court's order.
Distinguishes Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee (589 U. S. ___)
The April 2020 Wisconsin primary ruling did not approve extending the ballot-receipt deadline; that issue was explicitly not before the Court then.