Professor Amar Cited by Fourth Circuit in Absentee Voting Case

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit this week drew on and cited to Professor Vikram Amar's work in the area of voting equality in Grant v. Belangia, a case involving a South Carolina law that discriminates on the basis of age with respect to absentee-voting eligibility. 

Tracking arguments Amar has advanced in several law review articles, including this one in the Notre Dame Law Review, the Fourth Circuit (in a 3-0 ruling that included judges nominated by Presidents Clinton, Obama and Trump) held that the equality command of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution forbids government from using age (just as it forbids government from using race or sex) in the regulation or allocation of voting rights. Currently, a half a dozen or more of the states use age in determining absentee-voting eligibility. The case sets up a split between the Fourth Circuit and two other circuits, and thus might well be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court soon. 

Vikram Amar, one of the nation's most eminent and frequently cited authorities in constitutional law, federal courts, and civil procedure,  holds the Daniel J. Dykstra Endowed Chair at UC Davis School of Law. He returned to UC Davis as a distinguished professor of law in 2023 after serving for eight years as dean and Iwan Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Law.