Lewis v. Hughs
Texas
The NRF is supporting a group of individual voter-plaintiffs and organizations in a new lawsuit challenging Texas’s absentee voting restrictions that will unjustifiably risk the voting rights of Texans. Plaintiffs in the suit include five individual voter-plaintiffs, along with organizations: Voto Latino, the Texas State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans.
Lewis v. Hughs challenges four restrictions on ballots submitted by mail: (1) the requirement that voters pay for postage to return ballots by mail (“Postage Tax”); (2) the requirement that returned ballots be postmarked by 7:00 p.m. on election day and received by 5:00 p.m. the following day (“Ballot Receipt Deadline); (3) the requirement that voters submit handwriting samples that “match” (“Signature Match Requirement”); and (4) the criminalization of third party assistance in returning marked ballots (“Voter Assistance Ban”).
A separate group of voter-plaintiffs, supported by the NRF, recently filed Gloria v. Hughs, which challenges Texas’s Absentee Ballot Age Restriction that restricts the ability to vote by mail to voters based entirely on their age. All Texas voters age 65 and over may vote by mail, regardless of their personal circumstances, but voters under 65 may only do so if they fit into a handful of narrow categories. The Twenty-Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits burdening the right to vote based solely on a voter’s age.
Even if all registered voters are eligible to vote by mail in Texas in the November election, it would not be sufficient to prevent the serious risk of disenfranchisement and threats to public health that will occur if the current restrictions on vote by mail in the state remain in place in the pandemic.