The Center for Election Confidence (CEC) today filed an amicus brief in RNC v. Eakin (No. 25-962), urging the Supreme Court to grant the petition for a writ of certiorari and reverse the Third Circuit’s decision in Eakin v. Adams County Board of Elections—which held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit Pennsylvania county election boards from rejecting mail-in ballots that arrive with missing or incorrect dates on return envelopes.

CEC’s brief asserts that this case presents the Court with an opportunity “outside the frenzy of the election cycle, to restore order to litigation over election regulations” by adopting principles from Justice Scalia’s concurring opinion in Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd., 553 U.S. 181 (2008), criticizing what he viewed as the lower courts’ misapplication of Anderson-Burdick. Crawford remains “the last merits decision considering claims that election procedures violate the Constitution.” CEC argues that Justice Scalia’s warning has come to fruition, including with the Third Circuit’s improper invocation of the Anderson-Burdick doctrine to conclude that Pennsylvania violated the Constitution by requiring voters to put a date on mail ballot return envelopes. Eakin, CEC suggests, presents the Court with the right opportunity to offer clearer instructions to the lower courts with respect to the continued application of Anderson-Burdick.

In Crawford, Scalia stressed that “objective, uniform standard[s]” with “detailed judicial supervision”, rather than the “amorphous ‘flexible standard[s]’” improperly imposed by the lower courts. Since Crawford, the Anderson-Burdick regime has devolved into a “federal-judges-know-best” doctrine of election administration with no clear, stable, or permanent standards. This is why adoption of the rationale from Scalia’s concurrence is vital because “objective, uniform standard[s]” provide greater certainty to the States that any given election law will (or won’t) survive federal challenges. And certainty bolsters voter confidence.

Eakin is an ideal vehicle for imposing administrable standards upon the lower courts’ Anderson-Burdick disfunction not only because the facts below are primed, but also because the calendar for consideration provides ample separation from Election Day. The Court has engaged in such clean-up work in recent years, including in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. CEC contends that the lower court’s Anderson-Burdick disfunction is similar to, if not worse than, the misguided efforts described in Brnovich to apply Voting Rights Act § 2 vote denial claims to ordinary election rules. The Brnovich Court emphasized that “the concept of a voting system that is ‘equally open’ and that furnishes an equal ‘opportunity’ to cast a ballot must tolerate the ‘usual burdens of voting.’” The Court should take a similar tack here.

The Supreme Court should remove federal courts from the election policy debate so that they may focus their attention on the proper application of “objective, uniform standard[s]”. CEC urges the Court to grant review in RNC v. Eakin and reverse the Third Circuit.

The Center for Election Confidence thanks Bradley A. Benbrook, Stephen M. Duvernary, and Jamie G. McWilliam of Benbrook Law Group for their representation in this matter.