Full Opinion

USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 1 of 29 PUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 25-1413 TRUDY B. GRANT; SARAH KRAWCHECK; NASHONDA HUNTER; MAX MILLIKEN; CALEB CLARK, Plaintiffs – Appellants, and JORDAN MAPP, Plaintiff, v. CONWAY BELANGIA, as the Executive Director of the South Carolina Election Commission; JOANNE DAY, as a Member of the South Carolina Election Commission; CLIFFORD J. EDLER, as a Member of the South Carolina Election Commission; ANGELA STRINGER, as a Member of the South Carolina Election Commission; SCOTT MOSELEY, as a Member of the South Carolina Election Commission; CHARLESTON COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS AND VOTER REGISTRATION; ROBERT BOLCHOZ, Chairman of the South Carolina State Election Commission, Defendants – Appellees. ------------------------------ CONSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER, Amicus Supporting Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Charleston. Bruce H. Hendricks, District Judge. (2:23-cv-06838-BHH) Argued: January 28, 2026 Decided: August 18, 2026 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 2 of 29 Before GREGORY, HARRIS, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges. Reversed in part, affirmed in part, and remanded by published opinion. Judge Gregory wrote the opinion, in which Judge Harris and Judge Richardson joined. ARGUED: Pamela Karlan, STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, Stanford, California, for Appellants. Tracey Colton Green, BURR & FORMAN LLP, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Armand Derfner, Jonathan S. Altman, DERFNER & ALTMAN, LLC, Charleston, South Carolina; Susan K. Dunn, Charleston, South Carolina; Chad W. Dunn, BRAZIL & DUNN, LLP, Austin, Texas, for Appellants. Mary Elizabeth Crum, Michael R. Burchstead, BURR & FORMAN LLP, Columbia, South Carolina; Thomas W. Nicholson, STATE ELECTION COMMISSION, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellees State Election Commission and its Named Members. John E. Robinson, THE LAW OFFICES OF JOHN E. ROBINSON, Charleston, South Carolina, for Appellee Charleston County Board of Elections and Voter Registration. Elizabeth B. Wydra, Brianne J. Gorod, David H. Gans, Anna K. Jessurun, CONSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER, Washington, D.C., for Amicus Curiae. 2 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 3 of 29 GREGORY, Circuit Judge: The Constitution grants states broad authority to regulate “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections,” U.S. Const. art. 1, § 4, including whether to permit absentee voting. But when a state offers a method for casting a ballot, the Constitution forbids restricting access to that voting method based on any prohibited ground, including age. U.S. Const. amend. XXVI. Because the South Carolina statute at issue restricts access to “no excuse” absentee-by-mail ballots to voters sixty-five years of age or older, we agree with Plaintiffs that it violates the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. We affirm, however, the district court’s dismissal on Plaintiffs’ Equal Protection claim. I. A. Section 7-15-320 of the South Carolina Code states that “[q]ualified electors” in the following four categories “must be permitted to vote by absentee ballot in an election”: electors who are physically disabled; members of the Armed Forces and Merchant Marines of the United States, their spouses, and dependents; persons admitted to hospitals as emergency patients on the day of an election or within a four-day period before the election; and “persons sixty-five years of age or older.” S.C. Code § 7-15-320(B). Voters under age sixty-five who do not fall into any of these categories may vote absentee-by-mail only if they meet one or more of the following four conditions: they have conflicting employment obligations and can present written certification of the obligations to their county board of voter registration and elections; they will be attending to sick or physically disabled persons; 3 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 4 of 29 they are confined to a jail or pretrial facility pending disposition of arrest or trial; or they are otherwise going to be absent from their county of residence. S.C. Code § 7-15-320(A). So, as it relates to age, this statutory framework creates a two-tier absentee-by-mail voting system: voters age sixty-five and older may vote absentee by mail in any election for any reason, while voters under age sixty-five may vote absentee by mail only if they qualify under one of the four narrow enumerated excuses in § 7-15-320(A) or other specified categories in § 7-15-320(B). Under South Carolina’s election code, absentee voting by mail operates through a structured application process with timing and documentation features. Voters (or certain permitted intermediaries) must first request an absentee ballot application from the county board in person, by telephone, or by mail. S.C. Code Ann. § 7-15-330(A). They must then return their completed application to their county board of voter registration and elections in person by 5:00 p.m. on the eleventh day before the election. S.C. Code Ann. § 7-15- 330(C). 1 For those seeking absentee voting based on work obligations, the statute requires a voter’s application to include written certification from their employer. S.C. Code Ann. § 7-15-320(A)(1). The county board must maintain a serially numbered application record book and, with limited exceptions, that information becomes public shortly before the election. S.C. Code Ann. § 7-15-330(E). 1 The scheme contains a narrow accommodation for voters admitted to a hospital within four days of the election or on Election Day. S.C. Code Ann. § 7-15-330(D). 4 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 5 of 29 B. Plaintiffs are five registered South Carolina voters under age sixty-five who challenge the age-based restrictions on absentee-by-mail voting imposed by § 7-15-320 of the South Carolina Code. These voting rules, they argue, unconstitutionally discriminate against them solely based on their age, in violation of both the Twenty-Sixth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. To bring this challenge, Plaintiffs sued the Executive Director and all the members of South Carolina’s State Election Commission in their official capacities, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The district court granted summary judgment to Defendants on both claims. Plaintiffs timely appealed. II. Before turning to the merits, we must address Article III standing. 2 Article III of the Constitution limits the federal judicial power to “Cases” and “Controversies,” and standing is an essential part of that limitation. U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 1. It is well-established that a plaintiff must satisfy three elements to show standing. Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560–61 (1992). First, the plaintiff must show an injury in fact, meaning a concrete and particularized injury that is actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical. Id. at 560; Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 339–41 (2016). Second, plaintiff’s alleged injury must be fairly traceable to the challenged conduct and not the result of independent action by a 2 In their response brief on appeal, Defendants argued only that they were entitled to summary judgment on the merits. Resp. Br. 7–10. They did not challenge Plaintiffs’ standing. The district court briefly addressed standing and found it satisfied. J.A. 103. We ordered supplemental briefing on standing before oral argument, and the issue was addressed extensively during the hearing. 5 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 6 of 29 third party not before the court. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560–61. Third, it must be likely, not merely speculative, that the requested relief will remedy the alleged injury. Id. at 561; Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751 (1984); Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Env’t Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 180–81 (2000). The plaintiff must establish each of these elements “with the manner and degree of evidence required at the successive stages of the litigation.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561. We review de novo whether Plaintiffs have Article III standing. See Deal v. Mercer County Bd. of Educ., 911 F.3d 183, 188 (4th Cir. 2018). Defendants here attack Plaintiffs’ Article III standing almost exclusively on the first requirement, asserting that Plaintiffs have not suffered a cognizable injury in fact and thus do not have standing to sue. We disagree. The alleged injury in this case is the unequal treatment in voting based on age. This injury is sufficient to confer standing on Plaintiffs in this case. A. We first address whether Plaintiffs have shown an injury in fact and conclude that they have. When, as here, an individual challenges a discriminatory barrier to accessing a government program, the Supreme Court has made clear that the central question is whether the person is “able and ready” to take part in the program. As we explain below, Plaintiffs here make that showing. To begin, we must carefully identify the relevant Article III injury. The injury here is not Plaintiffs’ inability to vote absentee by mail per se. Instead, when a plaintiff challenges a discriminatory barrier to accessing a government program, the injury is “the denial of equal treatment resulting from the imposition of the” state’s age-based eligibility rule. Ne. Fla. Chapter of the Associated Gen. Contractors of Am. v. City of Jacksonville, 6 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 7 of 29 508 U.S. 656, 666 (1993). So, in this case, the relevant injury is the unequal treatment with respect to voting—Plaintiffs have fewer means to cast a vote than similarly situated voters age sixty-five or older. The Supreme Court has made clear that this sort of denial of equal treatment within a government program is a cognizable injury. Identifying a cognizable injury does not end our inquiry. We must still ensure that Plaintiffs have met the imminence and particularization requirements of standing. To aid this inquiry, we consider several cases in which the Supreme Court addressed how to analyze standing when a plaintiff seeks an injunction to prevent his unequal treatment within a government program. In those cases, the Court made clear that a plaintiff has standing only if he is “able and ready” to participate in the government program. See Carney v. Adams, 592 U.S. 53, 63 (2020). The Supreme Court first identified the able-and-ready test in Associated General Contractors, 508 U.S. at 666. There, a group of contractors brought an equal protection claim against a local ordinance that set aside certain government contracts for minority- owned businesses. The Court explained that the relevant injury in this kind of unequal access case is not “the ultimate inability to obtain the benefit” but the “denial of equal treatment.” Id. So, the contractors did not need to show they “would have obtained the benefit but for the barrier.” Id. Instead, they only needed to show that they were “able and ready to bid on contracts and that a discriminatory policy prevent[ed] [them] from doing so on an equal basis.” Id. The contractors were “able and ready” because they showed that they “regularly bid on construction contracts in Jacksonville, and that they would have bid on contracts set aside pursuant to the city’s ordinance were they so able.” Id. at 668. 7 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 8 of 29 The Court again applied the able-and-ready test in Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003). In Gratz, a student challenged the University of Michigan’s admission policies after being denied admission due to the school’s affirmative action policies. On top of seeking damages for his earlier rejection, the student sought forward-looking relief to allow him to transfer into the school. To have standing to seek an injunction, the Court held the student needed to show that he was “‘able and ready’ to apply as a transfer student should the University cease to use race in undergraduate admissions.” Id. at 262. The Court emphasized that the student did not need to have a transfer application pending with the university; being able and ready to apply was enough. Id. at 260–61. The Supreme Court further explained how to decide whether somebody is “able and ready” in Carney v. Adams, 592 U.S. 53 (2020). The plaintiff in Carney challenged a state requirement that applicants for certain judgeships must be members of one of the two major political parties. The plaintiff was an attorney who registered as a political independent shortly before challenging the major-party requirement. The Court reviewed all of the available record evidence to determine whether he was genuinely “able and ready” to apply for a judgeship. Id. at 63–64. Despite the plaintiff’s claims that he would apply if the major- party requirement was removed, the Court concluded that the record suggested the opposite. Beyond the plaintiff’s bare assertion that he would apply, nothing supported his claim. In fact, evidence suggested that the plaintiff had switched his party affiliation for the sole purpose of challenging the state rule. So, the Court held that the plaintiff lacked standing. Three lessons emerge. First, a plaintiff need not have a pending application to show that he is able and ready to participate in the government program. Gratz, 539 U.S. at 260– 8 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 9 of 29 61; Carney, 592 U.S. at 66. Second, a plaintiff’s past conduct, together with genuine future intent, can show that he is able and ready to participate. Associated Gen. Contractors, 508 U.S. at 668. Third, a plaintiff’s bare assertion of future intent will not suffice if belied by record evidence. Carney, 592 U.S. at 63–65. These lessons all support the core goal of the able-and-ready test: ensuring that the plaintiff has shown an individualized, imminent injury. In each of the relevant cases, the Court ensured that it was “reasonably foreseeable” that plaintiff faced future injury. Id. at 63. To apply these lessons, we must understand what the relevant government program is in which the plaintiffs must be able and ready to participate. Recall Plaintiffs’ core claim: South Carolina has unlawfully abridged their right to vote. Plaintiffs have fewer voting options than similarly situated voters aged sixty-five or older. For that reason, the relevant “program” is voting as a whole. Plaintiffs will be injured by unequal treatment whenever they vote. So, Plaintiffs must show that they are able and ready to vote in an upcoming election.3 Plaintiffs comfortably meet this standard. For starters, there is no doubt that Plaintiffs are “able” to vote. Cf. Hierholzer v. Guzman, 125 F.4th 104, 114 (4th Cir. 2025) (holding that the plaintiff was not “able and ready” to participate in a government program where plaintiff did not meet basic qualifications). Record evidence shows that Plaintiffs have regularly voted in past elections. In fact, some Plaintiffs have voted absentee in prior 3 While one could argue that the relevant program is specifically “no excuse” absentee voting, we reject that argument. Plaintiffs assert no right to vote by mail. They assert the right to vote free of an age-based abridgement, and absentee and in-person voting are alternative means to that single end. So we conclude that voting generally is the relevant focus. 9 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 10 of 29 elections, including one Plaintiff who voted by mail in North Carolina—which offers absentee-by-mail voting to all voters. 4 And Plaintiffs are “ready” to vote, too. They plan to vote in future elections and desire the option to vote absentee by mail. 5 Unlike in Carney, where record evidence undermined the plaintiff’s claims, there is no reason to doubt that Plaintiffs’ desire here is genuine. Plaintiffs’ history of regular voting and intent to do so in the future is enough in this case to show that they are “able and ready” to vote. So, they satisfy the first prong of standing. B. Plaintiffs also easily satisfy the causation and redressability requirements of Article III standing. Their alleged injury arises from the age-based barrier to “no excuse” absentee- by-mail voting created by South Carolina’s statutory scheme. That unequal access therefore flows directly from the statute’s text, so causation is met. See Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560–61. 4 While it may be relevant that one Plaintiff voted absentee by mail without excuse in the past, it is by no means required. Of course, those Plaintiffs who have lived their whole lives in South Carolina have never had the opportunity to vote absentee without excuse. So to require a track record of “no excuse” absentee voting would be to raise an insurmountable barrier for Plaintiffs. 5 Plaintiffs have not identified a specific election in which they would certainly vote absentee by mail. But they need not do so. The contractors in Associated General Contractors did not need to identify a specific future contract on which they would bid absent the set-aside policy. 508 U.S. at 668. A plaintiff need only show that it is “reasonably foreseeable” that he would face the discriminatory treatment. Carney, 592 U.S. at 63. Plaintiffs have done so here. Moreover, requiring Plaintiffs to identify a specific election would sit uneasily with the realities of election litigation. Courts must consider the potential for interference with elections when asked to alter rules close to Election Day. See Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1, 4–5 (2006) (per curiam). Requiring an election-specific pledge would tend to force review into the very period when pre-election relief is least feasible. 10 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 11 of 29 And given that Plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief, a ruling for Plaintiffs would require South Carolina either to permit “no excuse” absentee-by-mail ballot access on age-neutral terms or eliminate age-based rules for “no excuse” absentee-by-mail voting altogether. It does not matter, for standing purposes, whether the constitutional defect is cured by extending the challenged voting option to younger voters or by withdrawing it from older voters. See Heckler, 465 U.S. at 738–39 (“we have never suggested that the injuries caused by a constitutionally underinclusive scheme can be remedied only by extending the program’s benefits to the excluded class”). In discrimination cases, “plaintiffs . . . may seek equal treatment in the form of a level playing field,” regardless of whether the government levels up or levels down. Planned Parenthood of S.C., Inc. v. Rose, 361 F.3d 786, 790 (4th Cir. 2004); Heckler, 465 U.S. at 738–39. Either way, the disparity Plaintiffs challenge would be removed—and thus their injury would be redressed. See Associated Gen. Contractors, 508 U.S. at 666 n.5. We therefore conclude that Plaintiffs have standing and proceed to the merits. III. The district court granted summary judgment to Defendants on both constitutional claims. We review the district court’s decision de novo. See S.C. Green Party v. S.C. State Election Comm’n, 612 F.3d 752, 755 (4th Cir. 2010). IV. Turning to the merits, we first consider whether the South Carolina statute contravenes the Twenty-Sixth Amendment by conditioning access to “no excuse” 11 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 12 of 29 absentee-by-mail voting on age. For the reasons that follow, we hold that it does. Construing the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in harmony with the Constitution’s other voting rights amendments, we find that the unequal allocation of voting access based on age constitutes an abridgement of Plaintiffs’ right to vote. A. The text of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment is direct. It provides that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.” U.S. Const. amend. XXVI, § 1. Ratified in 1971, the Amendment followed the Supreme Court’s decision in Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970) (per curiam), which curtailed Congress’s attempt to lower the voting age by statute in the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970. In response, Congress adopted a constitutional rule governing age- based voting restrictions, and the states ratified it with unusual speed. 85 Stat. 829 (1971); David C. Huckabee, Ratification of Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, CRS Report No. 97-922, at 1 (Sept. 30, 1997), https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/97-922.html; https://perma.cc/FXP5-MTUE (last visited, May 19, 2026). But although the immediate purpose of ratifying the Twenty-Sixth Amendment was to uniformly lower the voting age to eighteen, “the language of the Amendment ‘transcend[s] the particular controversy which was the immediate impetus for its enactment.’” Tully v. Okeson, 78 F.4th 377, 383 (7th Cir. 2023) (quoting Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U.S. 495, 512 (2000)). “As with the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-Fourth Amendments, the Twenty- Sixth Amendment ‘provide[s] an individual right to be free from the denial or abridgement 12 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 13 of 29 of the right to vote based on the classification described in the Amendment.’” Id. (quoting Tex. Democratic Party v. Abbott, 978 F.3d 168, 184 (5th Cir. 2020)). Here, Plaintiffs do not claim that South Carolina’s absentee-by-mail scheme denies them the right to vote, but instead only that it unconstitutionally abridges that right. To evaluate Plaintiffs’ claim, therefore, we must first determine what constitutes an impermissible abridgement of the right to vote under the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. That inquiry does not take place in a vacuum. Instead, Congress evinced clear intent that the Twenty-Sixth Amendment should be construed in harmony with the Constitution’s other voting rights amendments. Cf. Tully, 78 F.4th at 382; Vikram David Amar, Taking (Equal Voting) Rights Seriously: The Fifteenth Amendment as Constitutional Foundation, and the Need for Judges to Remodel Their Approach to Age Discrimination in Political Rights, 97 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1619, 1620–31 (2022). Most obviously, in drafting the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, Congress adopted the same operative text used in the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-Fourth Amendments: “the right . . . to vote . . . shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of” a prohibited ground. U.S. Const. amends. XV, XIX, XXIV, XXVI. That textual choice is significant. When the Constitution uses the same language across related provisions, courts interpret that language consistently absent a reason to depart. Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v. United States, 286 U.S. 427, 433 (1932) (“There is a natural presumption that identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning.”); see also Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 13 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 14 of 29 170 (2012) (“A word or phrase is presumed to bear the same meaning throughout a text . . . .”); cf. Azar v. Allina Health Servs., 587 U.S. 566, 576 (2019). Moreover, contemporaneous evidence from 1970 and 1971 shows that choice was not made by accident. Indeed, the House Committee on the Judiciary expressly acknowledged that “[t]he language of the proposed” Twenty-Sixth Amendment “parallel[ed]” the previous voting rights amendments and “contemplated” that it would “be construed as comparable in scope to the Fifteenth Amendment and the Nineteenth Amendment.” H.R. Rep. 92-37, at 7 (1971); see also S. Rep. No. 92-26, at 2 (1971). Individual members of Congress echoed that understanding, placing youth enfranchisement in the same historical lineage as women’s suffrage and racial equality in voting. See 117 Cong. Rec. 7534 (1971) (statement of Rep. Poff) (“Just as the 15th amendment prohibits racial discrimination in voting and just as the 19th amendment prohibits sex discrimination in voting, the proposed amendment would prohibit age discrimination in voting, but only against those citizens who are 18 years of age or older.”); id. (“[The proposed amendment] does not grant the right to vote to all citizens 18 years of age or older. Rather, it guarantees that citizens who are 18 years of age or older shall not be discriminated against on account of age . . . the proposed amendment would protect not only an 18-year-old, but also the 88- year-old.”); 117 Cong. Rec. 7539 (1971) (statement of Rep. Pepper) (“What we propose to do in the Federal enfranchisement of those 18, 19, and 20 years of age is exactly what we did in enfranchising [blacks and formerly enslaved persons] with the 15th amendment and exactly what we did in enfranchising women country with the 19th amendment.”) 14 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 15 of 29 And significantly for our interpretive purposes, past Supreme Court cases have used precedent interpreting one voting rights amendment to interpret the scope of another voting rights amendment. See, e.g., Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, 542 (1965) (relying on a Fifteenth Amendment case, Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275 (1939), to interpret the Twenty-Fourth Amendment). For all these reasons, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment’s text, structure, and history demonstrate its purpose to place age-based restrictions on adult citizens’ electoral participation within the same family of constitutional prohibitions as other forbidden bases for denying or abridging the right to vote. That placement counsels interpreting the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in pari materia with the other voting-rights amendments. B. 1. So, what do these voting rights amendments mean? The Supreme Court has considered this question most extensively in interpreting the Fifteenth Amendment. 6 And these cases make clear that the purpose of the Fifteenth Amendment was to prohibit the abridgment or denial of any individual’s right to vote on the basis of the classifications protected by that amendment—race, color, and previous condition of servitude. 6 The Fifteenth and Twenty-Fourth Amendments have generated a more developed body of case law interpreting the “deny or abridge” formulation. By contrast, the Nineteenth Amendment has comparatively less judicial exposition and thus provides fewer direct doctrinal guideposts for applying that shared language. That difference in doctrinal principle does not detract from the main principle, which is that federal courts have long read the text of these amendments in pari materia. 15 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 16 of 29 In United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214, 217 (1875), for instance, the Supreme Court explained that the Fifteenth Amendment “prevents the States, or the United States, . . . from giving preference, in [voting], to one citizen of the United States over another on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This Amendment, the Court explained, created “a new constitutional right”: “exemption from discrimination in the exercise of the elective franchise” based on these protected characteristics. Id. at 218. The Supreme Court described the scope of the Fifteenth Amendment in similar terms in Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U.S. 495, 512 (2000), explaining that “[t]he design of the Amendment is to reaffirm the equality of races at the most basic level of the democratic process, the exercise of the voting franchise.” By embodying that equality principle and prohibiting racial discrimination in voting, the Amendment imposed what the Court described as a “mandate of neutrality.” Id. The Court explained the application of this principle as it applies to abridgement of the right to vote in Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board, 528 U.S. 320 (2000). Determining whether a voting practice abridges the right to vote “necessarily entails a comparison” to “some baseline” to determine whether it passes constitutional muster. Id. at 334. That case involved preclearance proceedings under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. See 52 U.S.C. § 10304. In such proceedings, states were required to receive federal approval before changing their voting procedures. Because this context “uniquely deal[s] only and specifically with changes in voting procedures,” the Court explained that the appropriate “baseline” for abridgement analysis is “the status quo that is proposed to be changed.” Bossier Parish, 528 U.S. at 334. In other words, the correct comparator 16 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 17 of 29 under Section 5 is temporal: a court must compare a group’s status under the proposed law to that same group’s status under the pre-existing legal framework. Unless the group is worse off, there is no Section 5 violation. The Fifteenth Amendment is different. In the context of the Fifteenth Amendment, the Court explained, the relevant comparison is not temporal; plaintiffs suing under the Fifteenth Amendment need not prove that a voting regulation has made them worse off than they were before. Id. at 333–34. Instead, the appropriate baseline in Fifteenth Amendment cases is “what the right to vote ought to be.” Id. at 334. 2. We next need to understand what the Court meant by “what the right to vote ought to be.” There are two ways to read this concept. One reading is that “what the right to vote ought to be” refers to some sort of Platonic form of the right to vote—a floor below which a state cannot pass. Under this reading, if a legislature infringes that right to vote with respect to a suspect class (race, sex, or age), it has violated the Constitution. But the better reading, we conclude, understands “what the right to vote ought to be” to require equal treatment in voting. First consider the Platonic-form reading. One might understand “what the right to vote ought to be” to mean protecting some bare minimum voting rights that a state must provide. Tully, 78 F.4th at 387 (comparing a state law to “the right to vote . . . as it was intended to be exercised”). For example, one court conceived of the right to vote as simply “the right to register, the right to cast a ballot, and the right to have that ballot counted.” Id. at 384. So conceived, a person’s right to vote is not abridged so long as he has some adequate 17 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 18 of 29 means to exercise it. Under that theory, no Plaintiff’s “right to vote” in the case before us has been affected because citizens under age sixty-five are able to cast an effective vote in person. Id. at 377–78. Although this reading may seem like a commonsense understanding of Bossier Parish’s invocation of “what the right to vote ought to be,” we reject it. As discussed above, this reading is inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fifteenth Amendment as an anti-discrimination rule. More fundamentally, it misunderstands the meaning of abridging “the right to vote” in the voting rights amendments. State governments retain the primary authority to determine the contours of the right to vote, and the voting rights amendments do not change that basic structure or create a freestanding universal “right to vote.” See U.S. Const. art. I, § 4. However, the amendments do forbid states from administering their voting rules in a discriminatory manner based on a protected characteristic. Shortly after the Fifteenth Amendment was enacted, the Supreme Court recognized as much. See Reese, 92 U.S. at 217 (“The Fifteenth Amendment does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one” but “prevents the States . . . from giving preference . . . on account of race.”). Thus, when the voting rights amendments use the phrase “the right . . . to vote,” they do not identify a fixed target, such as the Platonic form of the right to vote. Instead, the amendments reference the right to vote as it exists under state law. Against this backdrop, we can understand Bossier Parish’s use of the phrase “what the right to vote ought to be.” Rather than identifying some idealized version of the right to vote, the voting rights amendments still treat a state’s voting practices as the baseline “right to vote.” The amendments then make clear what a state cannot do: “abridge” those 18 USCA4 Appeal: 25-1413 Doc: 81 Filed: 08/18/2026 Pg: 19 of 29 rights on account of a protected class. Thus, instead of a retrogression analysis—as in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act—or a Platonic-form analysis, the voting rights amendments create an anti-discrimination framework for assessing abridgement. 7 Under this framework, even if a regulation does not make voting more burdensome for plaintiffs than it was before—that is, relative to the status quo ante—it may still “abridge” their voting rights under the Fifteenth Amendment if it imposes burdens on them because of a protected characteristic. The Fifteenth Amendment is concerned not only with “retrogression” but also with “discrimination more generally.” Bossier Parish, 528 U.S. at 334. C. Against that backdrop, we consider whether South Carolina’s absentee-by-mail rules, which establish different eligibility based on age, constitute an abridgment of Plaintiffs’ right to vote. Following the analysis below, we conclude that they do. 7 This understanding of the term “abridge” is consistent with its usage in the Privileges or Immunities Clause. See U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1 (“No State shall make