Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515441096 Page: 21 Date Filed: 06/04/2020 No. 20-50407 presence of the Virus. 33 McDonald’s progeny drives the point home. In Goosby, 409 U.S. at 521, the Court distinguished McDonald on the ground that “the Pennsylvania statutory scheme absolutely prohibit[ed the plaintiffs] from voting.” Similarly, in O’Brien, 414 U.S. at 530, the plaintiffs were “denied any alternative means of casting their vote,” so McDonald did not control. Thus, in both Goosby and O’Brien, the absentee rules were suspect only because the state had prevented the vote. 34 The mail-in ballot, in other words, was the plaintiffs’ only shot at exercising the franchise. The same is not true here. The plaintiffs fare no better in trying to distinguish McDonald by pointing out that section 82.003 discriminates based on age. True, in McDonald, 394 U.S. at 807, rational-basis scrutiny applied partly because the statute did not discriminate on the basis of race or wealth. But section 82.003 also does not differentiate on impermissible equal-protection grounds, given that age is not a suspect class. 35 Though they complain of age discrimination, the plaintiffs next assail McDonald, 394 U.S. at 810. The Court gave examples of persons who, for reasons beyond the state’s control, might not be able to make it to the polls on election day, such as a doctor called in for emergency work. See id. at 810 n.8. The court implied that a state’s failure to provide such persons with an absentee ballot is not irrational. Id. at 809–10 (“Illinois could . . . make voting easier . . . by extending absentee voting privileges to those in [the inmates’] class. Its failure to do so, however, hardly seems arbitrary, particularly in view of the many other classes of Illinois citizens not covered by the absentee provisions, for whom voting may be extremely difficult, if not practically impossible.”). 33 See also Kramer v. Union Free Sch. Dist. No. 15, 395 U.S. 621, 626 n.6 (1969) (distinguishing McDonald on the ground that “[t]he present appeal involves an absolute denial of the franchise”). 34 Kimel v. Fla. Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62, 83 (2000). Of course, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment is relevant to age discrimination in voting; the plaintiffs’ claim under it is covered below. 35 21