By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that a Pennsylvania law requiring mail-in ballots in the presidential battleground state be thrown out if they arrive in envelopes with the wrong or missing date written on them is unconstitutional.
A three-judge panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with groups affiliated with the Democratic Party and the American Federation of Teachers in finding that the state law imposed an improper burden on Pennsylvanians' constitutional right to vote.
How Pennsylvania counts mail-in ballots has become a focal point of litigation for years in a state that has often been pivotal in determining the outcome of presidential elections, as it was last year.
Republican President Donald Trump won the state over his Democratic rival Kamala Harris in November following his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, after Democrats actively used mail-in voting in that election.
Trump last week said on social media that he would lead a movement to eliminate mail-in ballots, claiming Democrats are "virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM."
The 3rd Circuit last year held the state's date requirement for mail-in ballots did not violate a federal civil rights law. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
But that ruling did not assess whether the requirement violated the U.S. Constitution's First and Fourteenth Amendments by unduly burdening the right to vote. A lower-court judge in March said it did, prompting an appeal.
Senior U.S. Circuit Judge D. Brooks Smith, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, agreed, saying the requirement was only tangentially linked to advancing the state's interests, which included preventing voter fraud.
"Weighing these interests against the burden on voters, we are unable to justify the Commonwealth’s practice of discarding ballots contained in return envelopes with missing or incorrect dates that has resulted in the disqualification of thousands of presumably proper ballots," Smith wrote.
Two judges appointed by Democrats joined Smith's opinion.
Uzoma Nkwonta, a lawyer for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in a statement called the ruling "a decisive victory for voting rights and democratic participation in Pennsylvania."
The Republican National Committee had intervened in the case to support the law, which was defended by Republican state Attorney General Dave Sunday. His office said it is reviewing the ruling and considering its options.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Leslie Adler)
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