Case: 20-50407
Document: 00515441096
Page: 2
Date Filed: 06/04/2020
No. 20-50407
United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, No. 19A1044, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 3041,
at *3 (U.S. May 29, 2020) (mem.) (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the denial of
injunctive relief).
“Our Constitution principally entrusts ‘[t]he safety and the health of the
people’ to the politically accountable officials of the States ‘to guard and protect.’” Id. (quoting Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 38 (1905)). Either
overlooking or disagreeing with that admonition, the district judge a quo suspects that—referring to the defendant state officials—“[t]here are some among
us who would, if they could, nullify” the promises of the Declaration of Independence and “forfeit[] the vision of America as a shining city upon a hill.” He
resolves to take matters into his own hands.
In an order that will be remembered more for audacity than legal reasoning, the district judge intervenes just weeks before an election, entering a
sweeping preliminary injunction that requires state officials, inter alia, to distribute mail-in ballots to any eligible voter who wants one. But because the
spread of the Virus 1 has not given “unelected federal jud[ges]” 2 a roving commission to rewrite state election codes, we stay the preliminary injunction
pending appeal.
I.
To help ensure the health of Texas voters while protecting the integrity
of the state’s elections, Governor Greg Abbott declared that, among other
things, the May 2020 primary runoff elections would be postponed to July 14,
1
We refer to the relevant virus and the disease it causes as “the Virus.”
S. Bay, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 3041, at *3 (Roberts, C.J., concurring) (quoting Garcia v.
San Antonio Metro. Transit Auth., 469 U.S. 528, 546 (1985)).
2
2