Bob Daemmrich/Zuma
On Wednesday, the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a ruling blocking key measures of Texas’ sweeping voter suppression law, SB 1.
A lower court previously ruled that the law, which effectively made it harder for people to vote with assistance, violated disability civil rights laws. It also created more barriers to voting by mail.
“It has long been established that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote, according to Democracy Docket. “That is why voting by mail jeopardizes election integrity and democracy itself.”
There is no evidence that mail-in ballots are “prone to fraud.” An analysis from the Brookings Institution found an “average total mail voting fraud percentage across the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections of only 0.000043 [percent].” Or, about 4 votes per 10 million votes. Mail-in voting can be very important for disabled and aging people, who otherwise may have to deal with accessibility challenges with getting to the polls and access issues when voting itself.
One of the plaintiffs of the initial lawsuit, La Union del Pueblo Entero v. Abbott, filed in 2021, is the historically Black sorority Delta Sigma Theta. One of its members, Candace Wicks told me in 2024 that she was frustrated about the barriers disabled people faced while voting since SB. 1.
Disabled people, Wicks said, “face barriers every day in terms of discrimination in our daily lives.” SB1, which she sees as a form of disenfranchisement, is to her just one example. “We need to make our democracy accessible to everybody, regardless of our ability,” she said.
Research from the Brennan Center found that SB 1 in Texas had devastating impacts when many of its provisions in effect. A 2025 research paper found that thousands of Texans, disproportionately people of color, had their ballots rejected in the 2022 primary due to SB. 1. People whose ballots were rejected were less likely to vote in the 2022 general election in November and also were less likely to vote in 2024.
Wednesday’s ruling could impact turnout for the 2026 Texas Senate race, where Democrat James Talarico has a shot at flipping that Texas Senate seat Blue in a contest against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
