A federal appeals court has revived a set of Texas mail-ballot restrictions that had been blocked for more than a year, handing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton what he called a ‘major victory’ in the state’s long-running fight over its 2021 election overhaul. On August 13, 2026, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s March 2025 ruling and restored nine provisions of Senate Bill 1, the sweeping election law Texas Republicans passed five years ago in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
What the Court Decided
In an 11-page opinion, Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham wrote that most of the challengers’ claims failed for lack of legal standing, with only one failing on the merits. ‘The bulk of the plaintiffs’ claims fail for lack of standing. One fails on the merits. But none justifies interference with the State Legislature’s efforts to prevent voter fraud and to protect election integrity,’ Oldham wrote in the ruling. The decision reverses the lower court’s judgment in its entirety, reinstating provisions that had been on hold since last year.
The Restored Provisions
Among the reinstated rules: voters applying for a mail-in ballot must provide an identification number or Social Security number that matches state voter records; the law’s process for curing, or fixing, defective mail ballots is reinstated; and voters who receive help filling out their ballots, along with the people assisting them, must sign oaths swearing they did not coerce the voter and disclosing their relationship to that voter. All nine provisions had been struck down by a district judge in March 2025 after plaintiffs argued they were overly burdensome, particularly for voters with disabilities.
Origins in Harris County’s Pandemic-Era Voting Changes
Senate Bill 1 was passed in 2021 and was aimed in large part at unwinding voting initiatives that Harris County, the state’s most populous county and home to Houston, had implemented during the pandemic, including drive-through voting and extended early-voting hours. The law reshaped how local election officials administer elections statewide and how many Texans cast mail ballots, prompting a wave of lawsuits from voting-rights and disability-rights advocates that were eventually consolidated into the case decided this week.
Diverging Views on Ballot Security and Access
Paxton, a defendant in the underlying suit, cast the ruling as vindication of the state’s authority to guard against fraud, posting on social media that it was a ‘major victory’ for Texas election integrity. State officials and supporters of SB 1 point to a sharp drop in ballot rejection rates as evidence the law is working as intended: rejections of mail-in applications or ballots due to identification errors fell from roughly 11 percent to about 2.7 percent after the law’s ID-matching requirement took effect. Critics, however, argue that figure obscures how many eligible voters were shut out entirely. A 2022 study found that as many as one in seven voters requesting a mail ballot in that year’s primary had an application or ballot rejected in SB 1’s immediate aftermath, a spike that voting-rights and disability advocates say shows the law’s paperwork burdens fall hardest on seniors and voters with disabilities who rely on mail voting.
A Broader Pattern of Mail-Voting Fights
The Texas ruling lands amid a broader national wave of litigation over absentee and mail-ballot procedures ahead of the 2026 midterms. Courts and legislatures in multiple states have spent the summer sparring over signature verification, ballot curing, and voter-assistance rules, with Republican officials generally pushing for stricter identity verification and Democratic-aligned groups and disability advocates warning that added steps disenfranchise otherwise-eligible voters. The 5th Circuit’s decision is one of the most significant rulings yet in that fight, reinstating a multi-part regulatory scheme rather than a single provision.
What Happens Next
With the appellate ruling in place, the restored SB 1 provisions are set to apply to Texas’s 2026 election cycle, meaning voters seeking mail ballots this fall will again need to provide matching identification numbers and follow the reinstated curing and assistance-oath procedures. Plaintiffs in the case have not yet indicated whether they will seek en banc review from the full 5th Circuit or petition the U.S. Supreme Court, but voting-rights groups are expected to continue monitoring rejection rates as the new requirements take effect. Election administrators across Texas’s 254 counties will need to update guidance for local officials handling mail applications in the coming weeks, with early voting for the November general election approaching later this year.
Photo: coolmikeol / BY via flickr
