In a win for Democrats, the State Supreme Court ruled in favor of keeping Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting laws in effect for the near future on Tuesday, March 1.

The justices issued a court order overturning a decision made in February by a Commonwealth Court Judge that would have seen the end of the state’s voting law.

However, the voting law may only be safe for a short time, as the state Supreme Court says they will hear oral arguments that challenge the law throughout the month.

In Pennsylvania, most restrictions against the mail-in voting process were lifted in 2019 as part of a deal in which Republican legislative members agreed to in order to end straight-ticket voting throughout the state.

A majority of those Republicans who supported the measure in 2019 now are opposed to the laws.

Governor Wolf’s administration asked the courts to uphold the mail-in voting laws during its litigation. The administration believed that putting an end to the mail-in voting just before the primary season would “only exacerbate voter confusion and the danger of disenfranchisement.”

In January, three Republican judges ruled that no-excuse absentee voting is forbidden under the Pennsylvania Constitution. In that same argument, two Democrats dissented to the opinion, saying that the Pennsylvania Constitution does permit no-excuse voting under certain provisions that says elections “shall be by ballot or by such other method as may be prescribed by law.”

Democrats throughout the Commonwealth used mail-in voting far more than Republicans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those now opposed to the measures seemingly believe no-excuse absentee voting provides a level of superiority to fellow Democratic opponents during election time.

Pennsylvania is not the only state that the Republican-led legislatures are trying to throw out existing mail-in voting laws.

A lawsuit from the Arizona Republican Party is also looking to strike down the vote-by-mail system that a vast majority of voters used in the 2020 General Elections.

The Arizona battleground state may be critical in determining the balance of power of the US Senate come the 2022 Midterm Elections in November.

Lawyers backing the lawsuit for the GOP in Arizona say, “In-person voting at the polls on a fixed date (election day) is the only constitutional manner of voting in Arizona.”

This is all coming at a time where many see voting rights as a primary attack point for Republican state legislatures.

From the Peach State of Georgia where we have seen state legislation passed that limit early voting sites and the available hours of ballot drop boxes, to the more than 10,000 mail-in ballots that were not counted in the recent Texas Primaries in Harris County due to a change in their mail-in laws. Many of those who are seeing these laws as making it harder to vote come from historically marginalized and underrepresented groups of Americans.

From the site of “Bloody Sunday” on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., Vice President Kamala Harris called the site hallowed ground on which people stood up for the “most fundamental right of America citizenship: the right to vote.”

“Today, we stand on this bridge at a different time,” Harris stated in a speech to a gathering crowd. “We again, however, find ourselves caught in between. Between injustice and justice. Between disappointment and determination. Still in a fight to form a more perfect union. And nowhere is that more clear than when it comes to the ongoing fight to secure the freedom to vote.”

As the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the mail-in voting laws for the time being, there may come a time where we see the only option of voting is showing up in-person to the polls on election day. With the upcoming Pennsylvania Primaries in May, and the 2022 Midterm Elections in November, there is no better time than now to make a plan for how to vote.