Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515441096 Page: 16 Date Filed: 06/04/2020 No. 20-50407 B. We turn to the constitutional claims. Texas Election Code § 82.003 generously provides those aged sixty-five and older with the option to vote by mail, but the district court held that that provision violates equal protection as applied. The state officials will likely show that it does not. 1. “States . . . have broad powers to determine the conditions under which the right of suffrage may be exercised,” Lassiter v. Northampton Cty. Bd. of Elections, 360 U.S. 45, 50 (1959), and Texas has long allowed certain groups, including persons aged sixty-five and over, to vote early by mail. 25 Not everyone has that privilege, however, so with the Virus spreading, Texas plans to implement measures to protect those who go to the polls. Those measures include the bread and butter of social distancing, such as protective masks for election workers, plentiful cleaning wipes and hand sanitizer, cotton swabs for contacting touch screens, and floor decals inside the polling places that show where voters should stand. 26 The plaintiffs demand that Texas go further. They complain that the state violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in failing to extend the vote-by-mail privilege to them. The plaintiffs’ theory comes in two flavors. First, they assert (rightly) that section 82.003 facially discriminates on the basis of age, and they conclude See TEX. ELEC. CODE §§ 82.001–82.004, 82.007; In re State, 2020 Tex. LEXIS 452, at *21 (noting that Texas first permitted early voting in 1917 and a mail ballot in 1933). An absentee ballot for those sixty-five and older was first allowed in 1975. Id. at *22. 25 Id. at *26 (“[A]s [Texas] highlights, authorities planning elections are working in earnest to ensure adherence to social distancing, limits on the number of people in one place, and constant sanitation of facilities.”). 26 16