Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515441096 Page: 17 Date Filed: 06/04/2020 No. 20-50407 (wrongly) that strict scrutiny applies. Second, they stress that because the statute doesn’t permit them to vote by mail during this pandemic, it unlawfully burdens their fundamental right to exercise the franchise. The district court had no trouble agreeing with the plaintiffs, hurling invectives at what it apparently saw as the state officials’ harebrained justifications for gifting older but not younger voters with a vote by mail. The district judge concluded that strict scrutiny applies, because section 82.003 supposedly places a severe burden on the plaintiffs’ right to vote, as voters who trek to the polls risk exposure to the Virus. In so doing, the court rejected Texas’s asserted interests in giving older citizens special protection and in guarding against election fraud. “Both reasons, even taken at face-value [sic], fail to outweigh the burden voters will face in exercising their right to vote before the threat of [the Virus] can be realistically be [sic] contained.” The district court opined, in the alternative, that the statute would fail even rational-basis review—a standard under which a law enjoys “a strong presumption of validity.” F.C.C. v. Beach Commc’ns, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 314 (1993). “There is no rational state interest,” the district court informed the state officials, “in forcing the majority of . . . voters to visit polls in-person [sic] during a novel global pandemic, thus jeopardizing their health (and the health of all those they subsequently interact with).” Neither is there a valid “interest in fencing out voters under the age of 65 [on a theory that] it would introduce rampant fraud, while allowing older voters to utilize mail ballots and allowing the alleged rampant fraud therewith.” No stranger to rank speculation, the judge then accused Texas of seeking to disenfranchise a certain “sector of the 17