11th-Hour Ruling — Judge Shakes Up Midterm Voting
A federal appeals court has struck down South Carolina’s age-based absentee-by-mail voting system, ruling that the state violates the Twenty-Sixth Amendment when it gives voters 65 and older unrestricted access to mail ballots while requiring most younger voters to satisfy additional eligibility conditions.
The unanimous decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reverses a lower-court ruling that had upheld the state’s system and sends the case back to a federal district judge to decide how—and when—the constitutional violation should be corrected before South Carolina’s Nov. 3 statewide general election.
The Aug. 18 ruling in Grant v. Belangia does not automatically create universal no-excuse absentee voting in South Carolina. The appeals court expressly left the remedy to the district court, identifying two constitutionally permissible options: extend the same no-excuse absentee-by-mail access enjoyed by voters 65 and older to younger adult voters, or eliminate the age-based privilege for older voters and return them to the same generally applicable eligibility rules.
That choice could have immediate consequences for election administrators and voters because South Carolina’s 2026 statewide general election is approaching quickly. Election Day is Nov. 3, while the state’s in-person early-voting period is scheduled to run from Oct. 19 through Oct. 31. The Fourth Circuit specifically instructed the lower court to consider the Supreme Court’s warning against disruptive judicial changes to election rules when voting is imminent.
The decision is significant for another reason: the Fourth Circuit openly rejected the reasoning used by two other federal appellate courts that previously upheld similar age-based absentee-voting systems in Texas and Indiana. That disagreement among federal circuits increases the possibility that the constitutional question could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court, although no Supreme Court petition from South Carolina had been publicly resolved as of Sept. 1.
South Carolina’s current absentee law creates a two-tier system. Under Section 7-15-320 of the South Carolina Code, voters who are physically disabled, members of the Armed Forces or Merchant Marines and certain family members, qualifying emergency hospital patients, and people 65 or older may vote absentee by mail without having to show that they are unable to vote during the state’s early-voting period or on Election Day.
Most voters younger than 65 face additional requirements. They may qualify for absentee voting if employment obligations prevent them from voting during the full early-voting period and on Election Day, if they are caring for someone who is sick or physically disabled, if they are confined in jail pending disposition of an arrest or trial, or if they will be absent from their county of residence during the relevant voting periods. Employment-based applicants may also be required to provide written certification.
The practical result, the Fourth Circuit said, is that a healthy 66-year-old voter may request a mail ballot simply because of age, while an otherwise identical 64-year-old voter may have to demonstrate that one of the state’s qualifying excuses applies.
Five registered South Carolina voters under age 65 challenged that distinction. Trudy Grant, Sarah Krawcheck, Nashonda Hunter, Max Milliken and Caleb Clark sued state election officials, arguing that the law discriminated against younger adult voters in violation of both the Twenty-Sixth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The federal district court in South Carolina initially rejected both claims and granted summary judgment to election officials in March 2025. The younger voters appealed, producing a sharply different result at the Fourth Circuit.
Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote the unanimous appellate opinion, joined by Judges Pamela Harris and Julius Richardson. The court held that South Carolina has broad authority to design election procedures and is not constitutionally required to offer absentee voting at all. But once a state creates a method for casting a ballot, the court concluded, it may not distribute access to that method on a basis the Constitution expressly prohibits.
The Twenty-Sixth Amendment provides that the right of U.S. citizens who are 18 years of age or older to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state “on account of age.” Ratified in 1971, the amendment is best known for lowering the voting age nationwide to 18, but the Fourth Circuit emphasized that its text does more than establish a minimum voting age. It also prohibits age-based denial or abridgment of voting rights among adult citizens.
That interpretation became the foundation of the court’s ruling. South Carolina argued that younger voters are not denied the right to vote because they can still vote in person, including through the state’s broad early-voting system. The state also noted that the Constitution does not independently guarantee a right to cast a ballot by mail.
The Fourth Circuit agreed with the second point but rejected the first as incomplete. The case, Gregory wrote, was not about whether voters possess a freestanding constitutional entitlement to an absentee ballot. It was about whether a state that voluntarily offers an additional voting method may make access to that method easier for one class of adult voters solely because of age.
The court concluded that it may not.
In one of the opinion’s central passages, Gregory wrote that South Carolina “allocates voting opportunities unequally based solely on age” by giving voters 65 and older unconditional access to absentee-by-mail voting while subjecting younger voters to eligibility categories, documentation requirements and deadlines.
The panel also focused on the real-world value of having an absentee ballot available before an unexpected problem arises. A younger voter may plan to vote in person but later encounter mandatory overtime, a childcare emergency, vehicle trouble, illness, severe weather or another event after the deadline for requesting a mail ballot. An older voter who obtained an absentee ballot without an excuse has an additional way to participate if such a contingency occurs.
The court described that additional option as a form of protection against unforeseen events. Older voters receive it automatically; younger voters do not. For purposes of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, the judges found that difference sufficient to constitute an age-based abridgment.
South Carolina defended the system in part by citing election administration and election integrity. The Fourth Circuit recognized both as legitimate governmental interests. But it held that those interests cannot justify allocating a voting opportunity on a ground the Twenty-Sixth Amendment specifically removes from the state’s permissible choices.
The state remains free to impose age-neutral absentee rules, the court said. It could make no-excuse mail voting available to all adult voters. It could also limit absentee voting more broadly. What it cannot do, under the Fourth Circuit’s interpretation, is grant unrestricted access to one class of adult citizens while withholding the same opportunity from another class solely because one group is older.
The plaintiffs did not win every part of the case. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s rejection of their Equal Protection Clause claim. Age is not considered a suspect classification under ordinary Equal Protection doctrine, and the plaintiffs had chosen on appeal to argue that strict scrutiny should apply rather than showing that the statute failed rational-basis review or the Anderson-Burdick framework normally used in many election-law cases.
The panel therefore left the lower court’s Equal Protection judgment in place while reversing on the independent Twenty-Sixth Amendment claim. That distinction is legally important because the case does not establish that every age classification in election administration is automatically unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling instead rests on the specific constitutional language prohibiting denial or abridgment of voting rights on account of age.
The remedy now becomes the most immediate question.
Federal courts confronting discriminatory benefit systems generally have two ways to restore equal treatment. They can “level up” by extending the benefit to the excluded group, or “level down” by withdrawing it from the favored group. The Fourth Circuit said either approach could eliminate the age-based disparity in South Carolina.
If the district court levels up, otherwise qualified voters ages 18 through 64 could receive the same no-excuse absentee-by-mail option currently available to voters 65 and older. That would produce a major short-term expansion of mail voting before the 2026 general election, although the details of application procedures and deadlines would still need to be administered by state and county election officials.
If the district court levels down, South Carolinians 65 and older could lose their automatic age-based qualification and would have to meet one of the same absentee categories that apply to younger voters, unless state lawmakers adopt a new age-neutral system. Such a remedy could affect a large population of older voters who have long relied on the existing rule.
The Fourth Circuit did not tell the district judge which option to choose. It also did not require an immediate change before the November election. Instead, the opinion invoked the Supreme Court’s Purcell principle, which cautions federal courts against altering election rules so close to an election that the change could confuse voters or burden administrators.
That timing issue may become as consequential as the underlying constitutional holding. A legal violation can exist even when a court determines that an immediate remedy would create excessive disruption. Conversely, delaying relief means an election could occur under rules an appellate court has already held unconstitutional. The district court must now weigh those competing concerns.
South Carolina’s voting calendar makes the problem concrete. The statewide general election is Nov. 3, not a November primary. In-person early voting begins Oct. 19 and runs through Oct. 31, with centers generally open six days a week. Absentee-by-mail procedures operate on a separate timetable that requires applications, verification, ballot delivery and return before Election Day.
Changing eligibility rules can therefore affect far more than a line of statutory text. County election offices may need new forms, updated public guidance, revised voter databases, training materials and outreach. Voters who previously believed they qualified—or did not qualify—may need new instructions. Those administrative realities are precisely why election cases often become more difficult as voting approaches.
The constitutional disagreement among federal appeals courts adds another layer of uncertainty.
In Texas Democratic Party v. Abbott, the Fifth Circuit considered a Texas law that permits voters 65 and older to vote by mail without an excuse while requiring younger voters to fit narrower statutory categories. In 2020, the Fifth Circuit held that the arrangement did not abridge younger voters’ rights under the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. The court reasoned that granting an additional voting privilege to older voters did not make younger voters’ preexisting right to vote more difficult than it had been before the benefit was created.
The Seventh Circuit reached a similar result in Tully v. Okeson, a challenge to Indiana’s absentee rules. Indiana also permits voters 65 and older to vote absentee by mail based on age while younger voters generally must qualify through other statutory categories. In 2023, the Seventh Circuit held that giving older citizens the mail-voting opportunity did not abridge the voting rights of younger citizens under the Twenty-Sixth Amendment.
The Fourth Circuit explicitly rejected that approach. Its opinion reasoned that the constitutional inquiry should not depend on whether younger voters are worse off than they were before a state expanded absentee voting for seniors. The relevant question, it said, is whether the state is currently allocating a voting opportunity unequally on the basis of age.
That difference may sound technical, but it produces opposite constitutional outcomes. Under the Fifth and Seventh Circuit approach, a state may be able to give an extra voting convenience to older voters without being required to give the same convenience to younger adults. Under the Fourth Circuit’s approach, once the convenience becomes part of the state’s voting system, access to it must be age-neutral unless another constitutional rule permits the distinction.
Circuit splits of that kind often attract Supreme Court attention because federal constitutional rights should ordinarily have the same meaning across the country. The Supreme Court previously declined to review an earlier phase of the Indiana litigation, and it did not issue a merits ruling resolving the Texas dispute. The new Fourth Circuit opinion therefore creates a clearer conflict for the justices to consider if South Carolina ultimately seeks review.
A Supreme Court case would potentially require the justices to define the word “abridged” in the Twenty-Sixth Amendment and decide whether the amendment guarantees equal access to voting methods a state chooses to provide, or merely prevents states from making the basic act of voting harder because of age.
The answer could affect more than South Carolina. Any state that gives older voters special access to absentee voting could face renewed scrutiny if it lies within a jurisdiction that adopts the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning or if the Supreme Court ultimately agrees with that interpretation nationwide.
At the same time, the ruling should not be confused with a general declaration that restrictions on absentee voting are unconstitutional. The Fourth Circuit repeatedly acknowledged that states may decide whether to offer mail voting and may adopt eligibility rules. The constitutional defect it identified was the use of age itself to distribute an additional voting opportunity among otherwise adult citizens.
Nor did the court rule that mail voting is constitutionally required. That point separates Grant from broader political arguments over whether states should promote or restrict absentee ballots. The case is fundamentally about equal treatment after a state has chosen to make a form of voting available.
The distinction also complicates attempts to place the ruling neatly inside the national partisan debate over mail ballots. Republicans in recent years have often emphasized chain-of-custody rules, voter verification and limits on broad mail voting, while Democrats and voting-rights organizations have generally pushed for easier access. But South Carolina’s challenged statute itself provides the less restrictive rule to older voters, a group that has often leaned Republican in recent elections.
A level-down remedy could therefore reduce mail-ballot access for seniors, while a level-up remedy would broaden it for younger voters. Neither outcome maps perfectly onto a simple partisan advantage without knowing who would use the additional—or reduced—access in a particular election.
Election-integrity concerns remain part of the policy debate even though they did not save the age distinction in the Fourth Circuit. States retain authority to require signatures, witnesses, application deadlines, identity verification and other procedures so long as those rules comply with federal law and constitutional protections. South Carolina may continue to regulate mail voting through age-neutral safeguards regardless of the ultimate remedy in Grant.
The case also arrives during an election cycle in which courts across the country are being asked to decide disputes over voter qualifications, citizenship verification, mail-ballot handling and federal versus state authority. Those cases involve different statutes and constitutional provisions, and the Grant decision does not resolve them. But together they illustrate how election administration has become one of the most heavily litigated areas of public law heading into the 2026 midterms.
For younger South Carolina voters who brought the case, the Fourth Circuit ruling represents a major victory because it recognizes unequal access itself as a constitutional injury. They did not have to prove that they would definitely miss an election without a mail ballot. The court said the denial of equal treatment in obtaining the voting method was enough to give them standing and support relief.
For state officials, the ruling creates a difficult operational and appellate choice. They can defend the existing policy through further review, prepare for a remedy that changes absentee eligibility, or work with lawmakers on a new age-neutral framework. Any of those options must be considered against a rapidly advancing election calendar.
The decision also puts special pressure on the district court because whichever remedy it selects could draw objections from a different group of voters. Expanding no-excuse absentee voting may be criticized as a major judicial change shortly before an election. Eliminating automatic eligibility for voters 65 and older may be criticized for withdrawing a longstanding voting option from seniors shortly before the same election.
That is why the Fourth Circuit’s reference to Purcell is likely to matter in the next stage. The appeals court found a constitutional violation but deliberately stopped short of prescribing an immediate election-season solution.
As of Sept. 1, South Carolina’s election information still described people 65 and older as a category eligible to vote absentee, reflecting the fact that the appellate opinion itself did not instantly rewrite election procedures. The district court’s remedy, any stay pending further appeal and possible action by higher courts will determine what rules actually govern the November contest.
The strongest conclusion at this stage is therefore narrower than saying universal mail voting has arrived in South Carolina. The Fourth Circuit has held that the present age-based system violates the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. It has not yet been finally determined whether the state must expand no-excuse absentee voting to all adult voters, withdraw it from seniors, delay a remedy because of the approaching election, or obtain relief from a higher court.
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What is already clear is that a voting rule once treated largely as an accommodation for older citizens has become a major constitutional test. By creating a direct split with federal appeals courts in Texas and Indiana, Grant v. Belangia has turned South Carolina’s absentee-ballot statute into a potentially national case about the meaning of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, the limits of state election authority and the power of courts to change voting procedures as Election Day approaches.
