Democratic National Committee v. Wisconsin State Legislature
The Supreme Court refused to reinstate a lower court order that had extended Wisconsin's deadline for receiving absentee ballots by six days, keeping Election Day as the cutoff for the November 2020 general election.
The decision reinforced that federal courts should not rewrite state election rules close to an election, and that state legislatures — not judges — hold primary responsibility for adapting election procedures during the pandemic.
How it got here: A federal district court in Wisconsin extended the absentee ballot receipt deadline; the Seventh Circuit stayed that order; the DNC applied to the Supreme Court to vacate the Seventh Circuit's stay.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Wisconsin law required absentee ballots to be received by Election Day, November 3, 2020. Concerned about COVID-19 mail delays and in-person voting risks, a federal district court extended that receipt deadline by six days to November 9 for ballots postmarked by November 3. The Democratic National Committee and allied groups asked the Supreme Court to lift the Seventh Circuit's hold on that extension and reinstate the district court's order.
The question before the Court
Should the Supreme Court have lifted a federal appeals court's hold on an order extending Wisconsin's absentee ballot receipt deadline during the COVID-19 pandemic and the November 2020 election?
The Court's answer
No — the Supreme Court declined to lift the appeals court's hold on the district court's extension. Justice Kavanaugh wrote separately to explain three independent reasons the district court's order was improper: it changed state election rules too close to the election, it substituted a federal judge's judgment for the state legislature's authority over pandemic-era election decisions, and Wisconsin's Election Day receipt deadline was constitutionally reasonable to begin with.
Kavanaugh rejected the argument that the deadline "disenfranchised" voters, noting that Wisconsin had already mailed over 1.7 million absentee ballots, offered multiple return options including drop boxes and in-person drop-off, and had run two prior pandemic-era elections. A reasonable deadline that voters had ample opportunity to meet does not unconstitutionally burden the right to vote.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Wisconsin absentee ballots that arrived after November 3, even if postmarked on time, would not be counted. The ruling also signaled that similar last-minute federal court interventions were off-limits in the roughly 30 other states with Election Day receipt deadlines, effectively shielding a broad category of state election laws from emergency judicial revision in the final weeks of the 2020 election cycle.
What changes now
Wisconsin's Election Day receipt deadline remained in place for the November 3, 2020 general election. Absentee ballots arriving after November 3, even if postmarked on time, were not counted. The underlying lawsuit challenging Wisconsin's election rules could continue in the lower federal courts, but the emergency extension was denied. The decision carried no direct legal effect on other states' elections, though its reasoning broadly discouraged similar last-minute federal court interventions elsewhere.
What this does not decide
The order does not decide the ultimate constitutional merits of Wisconsin's absentee-ballot receipt deadline — only that a federal district court should not have changed it close to the election. It does not address whether any particular voter was actually prevented from casting a ballot, nor does it resolve the underlying lawsuit.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Kavanaugh
“When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road should be clear and settled.”Kavanaugh explains the core rationale behind the Purcell principle limiting last-minute court changes to election rules.
Justice Kavanaugh concurred in the denial to explain three independent reasons the district court's extension was improper: the Purcell principle against altering election rules close to an election, the principle that state legislatures — not federal judges — have primary authority over pandemic-era election decisions, and the constitutional permissibility of reasonable election deadlines under the Anderson-Burdick test. He also rebutted the dissent's 'disenfranchisement' framing and its factual predictions about uncounted ballots.
Dissent — Justice Kagan
Justice Kagan dissented and would have reinstated the district court's order extending the receipt deadline. Applying the Anderson-Burdick balancing test directly, she concluded that the burden of Wisconsin's Election Day deadline — given COVID-19 mail delays, surging absentee ballot requests, and health risks from in-person voting — outweighed the state's interests in keeping it. She predicted tens of thousands and potentially up to 100,000 ballots would go uncounted.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the Purcell principle — the rule, established in prior decisions, that federal courts ordinarily should not alter state election rules when an election is imminent. Changing rules close to an election risks confusing both voters and election administrators, undermines public confidence in the results, and discourages the advance litigation that would allow problems to be resolved with less disruption.
- Separately, the concurrence held that pandemic-related election decisions belong primarily to state legislatures under Article I, §4 of the Constitution, not to federal courts. Judges lack the medical and scientific expertise to weigh public-health tradeoffs and are not accountable to voters — so courts must give wide deference to state legislatures, whether those legislatures decide to change their election rules in response to COVID-19 or to leave them intact.
- The concurrence applied the Anderson-Burdick balancing test — the standard framework for deciding whether a state election rule unconstitutionally burdens the right to vote. Under this test, courts weigh the burden a rule places on voters against the state's interest in enforcing it. A state cannot hold an election without deadlines, and requiring voters to act on time imposes no substantial burden on the right to vote.
- Kavanaugh rejected the claim that the deadline 'disenfranchised' voters, emphasizing that Wisconsin gave voters extensive options to return absentee ballots — by mail, at drop boxes, in person at clerk's offices, and at polling places on Election Day — and had been urging voters since August to request and return ballots early. Voters who miss a reasonable deadline after being given adequate opportunity are not disenfranchised.
- The concurrence distinguished the Court's April 2020 order in the Wisconsin primary (RNC v. DNC), which applicants claimed had already approved a similar deadline extension. Kavanaugh noted that the April order explicitly stated the deadline change 'was not challenged in this Court,' so it resolved nothing about the merits and could not serve as a precedent approving such extensions.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Purcell v. Gonzalez (549 U. S. 1)
Reaffirmed as the governing rule barring federal courts from changing state election laws close to an election.
Distinguishes Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee (589 U. S. ___)
Clarified that the April 2020 Wisconsin primary order did not approve a deadline extension, as that issue was never challenged before the Court.