Why the SC mail-in voting age ruling is unsettled law

The South Carolina mail-in voting age discrimination ruling is Grant v. South Carolina Election Commission, a reported unanimous decision by a Fourth Circuit panel. The panel reversed and remanded a judgment upholding South Carolina’s over-65-only no-excuse mail or absentee voting rule. The reported constitutional basis is the Twenty-Sixth Amendment—not the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, or Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Last verified: August 31, 2026, 00:00 UTC. [1]

The record reported so far is specific. Five plaintiffs—Grant, Krawcheck, Hunter, Milliken, and Clark—filed the case in the District of South Carolina in December 2023. Judge Bruce H. Hendricks granted summary judgment to the state Election Commission. The Fourth Circuit heard argument on January 28, 2026, before issuing the reported panel ruling. [2] The primary opinion PDF, appellate docket number, exact ruling date, and the identity of the third panel judge were not included in the materials reviewed here.

What the panel reportedly held

Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote for a unanimous panel that the statute “allocates voting opportunities unequally based solely on age.” [1] The panel therefore rejected the narrower approach associated with the Fifth and Seventh Circuits. Its reasoning, as reported, treats the Twenty-Sixth Amendment’s prohibition on age-based discrimination in voting as reaching the unequal allocation of no-excuse mail-voting access itself.

That disagreement is the practical center of the case. The Fourth Circuit did not merely apply an established national rule; it expressly broke with the Fifth and Seventh Circuits’ treatment of the same kind of age classification. [3] Election Law Blog likewise describes the decision as a unanimous Twenty-Sixth Amendment ruling that creates a circuit split. [4] Counsel preparing a jurisdiction tracker should record the conflict as an appellate split, not collapse the three outcomes into a general statement that age limits on mail voting are uniformly invalid.

Reversal is not the same as a completed remedy

The reported disposition matters as much as the constitutional conclusion: reversal and remand. The district court must still determine the consequence for South Carolina’s no-excuse voting regime. The reported alternatives are to make no-excuse mail voting available to all voters or to make it available to none. [1] Until that proceeding produces a remedy, it is imprecise to say that the state’s entire absentee-voting system has been “struck down,” or that every voter may immediately use no-excuse mail voting.

The available record also does not establish whether a petition for rehearing en banc or a petition for Supreme Court review has been filed, remains pending, or has been resolved. Those are open verification items. The primary opinion and docket should be pulled from CourtListener or PACER before the ruling is cited for a filing proposition, summarized to a client, or treated as an operative election-administration instruction.

Keep this case separate from signature matching—and from AI risk

This case concerns an age classification for access to no-excuse mail or absentee voting. It does not concern an automated voter-roll system, signature-verification model, or ballot-processing tool. The separate League of Women Voters v. Andino litigation involved an injunction concerning rejection of ballots over signature issues and should not be used as a substitute description of Grant. [5]

For present risk purposes, the defensible entry is narrow: a significant unanimous Fourth Circuit panel ruling, an explicit conflict with the Fifth and Seventh Circuits, and a remand in which the remedy remains to be specified. Pending primary-source verification, remedy developments, and any further review, counsel should track Grant as unsettled law—not as a final nationwide resolution of over-65 mail-voting restrictions.

References

1. SC mail-in absentee voting unconstitutional — The Post and Courier
2. South Carolina voters challenge absentee ballot law in Fourth Circuit — Courthouse News Service
3. Age restrictions on mail voting are unconstitutional, Fourth Circuit says in rare 26th Amendment case — Democracy Docket
4. Unanimous 4th Circuit opinion holds that South Carolina law allowing no-excuse mail balloting only for those over age 65 violates the 26th Amendment ban on age discrimination in voting, creating circuit split — Election Law Blog
5. Federal judge rules South Carolina must not reject ballots for signature issues — League of Women Voters