High court win for Democrats

Good morning!

The U.S. Supreme Court offered us a bit of a shocker yesterday.

The justices ruled 5-4 that states can indeed accept late-arriving mail-in ballots that are postmarked correctly. Court observers thought after oral arguments that the court would rule in the other direction.

The decision is an important one for Democrats in states like New Jersey, which allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted for up to six days after polls close. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the decision, which fellow conservative John Roberts joined along with the court’s three liberals.

Critics of the practice say ballots that arrive after Election Day shouldn’t count because, as Justice Samuel Alito said, if elections are decided by late-arriving ballots then “the electorate’s choice does not occur on election day.” But Barrett dismissed that argument.

 “The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received,” she wrote.

Medicaid: New Jersey joined other states in a lawsuit against the Trump administration over new Medicaid work rules. Via Lilo Stainton, “The lawsuit focuses largely on how the new rules define ‘medically frail,’ a category of recipients who are automatically exempt from proving that they are employed. ‘The rule makes it harder to access Medicaid by shrinking exemptions to the work requirement,’” Attorney General Jen Davenport told reporters.

Transportation: A federal judge on Monday made a final decision in the dispute between New Jersey and New York and the Trump administration over President Trump’s decision to freeze funds for the $16 billion Gateway tunnel project. The judge said Trump’s move to withhold federal funds for the project was illegal. “Defendants do not dispute that the suspension of federal grants flagrantly violates federal law,” the judge wrote.

Immigration: The Trump administration conceded in a court document Monday that it is abandoning its plan to transform a Roxbury warehouse into a massive immigrant detention center (the New York Times reported this recently based on documents it obtained). Gov. Mikie Sherrill and Davenport issued this joint statement: “Converting a warehouse for packages into a detention center for thousands of people would not only be inhumane but also have devastating local and environmental impacts—and it would not make New Jersey any safer.”