The Supreme Court hands Republicans a rare and significant loss, in RNC v. Genser

November 3, 2024:

On Friday evening, the Supreme Court ruled it would leave in place a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that made it marginally easier for certain voters in the state to cast a ballot. The Republican Party had asked the justices to block that decision; doing so would have likely disenfranchised thousands of voters.

But that won’t happen. The Court’s decision in Republican National Committee v. Genser was unanimous, although Justice Samuel Alito wrote a statement indicating that he and Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch are only ruling against the GOP on narrow procedural grounds.

The problem at the heart of the case was that Pennsylvania law is unusually strict regarding how mailed ballots must be returned by voters. They must be stuffed in two envelopes, and if the inner envelope is missing, the ballot is void. The state supreme court decision at issue in Genser ruled that voters who cast such a voided ballot can still vote if they show up on Election Day and cast a provisional ballot.

A win for the GOP could have scrambled future elections, too. The GOP’s legal arguments relied on a radical theory known as the “independent state legislature doctrine,” which the Supreme Court has rejected many times, but which all but one of the Court’s Republican members have expressed sympathy toward in the past.

So the Court was asked to play with some very dangerous magic in Genser and, to their credit, all nine justices refused this request.

The decision should also give a small degree of comfort to Democrats, who’ve had good reason to wonder if this Court — which has a 6-3 Republican majority — can be trusted to referee a close election after its Trump v. United States immunity decision, in which the justices declared Trump was allowed to commit many crimes as president. At the very least, Genser is a sign that this Court won’t embrace literally any legal theory put forth by the Republican Party.

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