Disability Voting News: July 1, 2026
Welcome to the Accessible Voting Booth, July 1 edition. The disability community has been justifiably reeling from several terrible actions from the Trump administration, including the transfer of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation and the Office of Civil Rights from the Department of Education to Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice respectively, and Department of Justice’s pro-institutionalization opinion memo that attempts to undermine the Olmstead v. L.C. decision. With all of this terrible news to contend with, voting hasn’t been top of mind, and I have few updates this week.
SCOTUS Declines to Review Arkansas Voting Rights Case, Further Eroding Voting Rights Act (via Arkansas Advocate).
On Monday, June 22, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Arkansas’ limits on voter assistance at the polls, leaving in place the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that only the government can bring lawsuits alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act’s provisions on voter assistance. By declining to review the case, SCOTUS upholds the 8th Circuit Court’s decision that there is no private right of action for voters with disabilities who have experienced discrimination, and only state attorney generals can act to enforce the VRA.
As I described in coverage of this case last July, this centered around a lawsuit filed by Arkansas United challenging a state law that limits how many individuals a non-election official can assist with voting to six people. The 8th Circuit Court’s ruling impacts citizens in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, who now no longer have the right to sue under Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which states that “any voter who requires assistance to vote by reason of blindness, disability, or inability to read or write may be given assistance by a person of the voter’s choice, other than the voter’s employer or agent of that employer or officer or agent of that voter’s union.” This impacts not just voters with disabilities, but also voters with limited English proficiency who benefit from voter assistance.
Voting rights groups have responded to the Supreme Court’s decision and how it particularly impacts voters in states where the administration favors voter suppression and weakening of voter rights laws: “The impact is there’s no voting rights enforcement because this administration is hostile to voting rights, so they won’t be doing any enforcement of [the] Voting Rights Act,” said Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund President and General Counsel Thomas A. Saenz.
Federal Judge in Boston Blocks Key Parts of Trump’s Order to Limit Voting by Mail (via NPR).
On Thursday, June 25, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani found that Trump’s directives to the U.S. Postal Service and Department of Homeland Security to create lists of eligible voters in each state, and to refuse to deliver mail-in ballots to states that don’t comply exceed his authority under the Constitution.
This ruling came only one day after a U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing during which Postmaster General David Steiner confirmed that the U.S. Postal Service will not deliver mail-in ballots to states that refuse to provide a list of absentee/mail-in voters to the USPS.
If you’re not familiar with the USPS’s recently proposed rule that would require states to provide a list of eligible voters and prohibit ballot delivery in states that refuse to provide the list, check out the June 17th issue of The Accessible Voting Booth, where I go into detail. I anticipate the legal battle around Trump’s Executive Order on mail-in voting and the USPS’s proposed rule to continue throughout the summer, and that leaves us with a lot of uncertainty about what absentee/mail-in voting will look like in November.
The Supreme Court upholds grace periods for mail-in ballots, siding against the GOP (via NPR).
On Monday, SCOTUS upheld a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and received up to five days after Election Day.
According to the National Council of State Legislatures, 14 states, along with Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C. accept mail-in/absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day but received after Election Day during a short grace period. A dozen states also have grace periods for overseas and military voters. In Watson v. RNC, SCOTUS ruled 5-4 to reject Republicans' claims that federal law prevents states from counting ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive during these grace periods.
This good news came out after I had finalized the newsletter for the week (which I usually do by Monday), so I didn't have time to write up much on it, but the American Association of People with Disabilities, which joined the ACLU, League of Women Voters, and Disability Rights Mississippi in an amicus brief that supported mail ballot grace periods, shared about the importance of this decision to voters with disabilities, explaining that because voters with disabilities face greater access barriers at the polls, they vote by mail at higher rates than people without disabilities.
"As a result of these barriers, people with disabilities vote by mail at higher rates than people without disabilities, and for many, it is their only option to cast a ballot. In an analysis of the 2024 election, over 60% of voters whose disabilities significantly affect daily activities said their disability influenced their decision to vote by mail. This means that policies that restrict mailed ballots disproportionately burden disabled voters."
Read the full statement from AAPD.
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