Whether Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act preempts a Texas state law that prohibits eligible voters from compensating their chosen ballot assisters or from choosing trusted assisters who are compensated

Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act provides that “[a]ny voter who requires assistance to vote by reason of blindness, disability, or inability to read or write may be given assistance by a person of the voter’s choice, other than the voter’s employer or agent of that employer or officer or agent of the voter’s union.” 52 U.S.C. § 10508. In 2021, Texas amended its election code to establish a felony for anyone who “compensates or offers to compensate another person for assisting voters” to vote by mail or who “solicits, receives, or accepts compensation for” assisting voters to vote by mail. Tex. Elec. Code Ann. § 86.0105. Texas law now renders criminal what federal law expressly protects. Under Texas’s new law, a voter who is blind, disabled, or cannot read or write commits a felony if she offers money to a friend or neighbor in exchange for help filling out her mail ballot. Blind, disabled, and low literacy voters who are members of La Unión del Pueblo Entero (“LUPE”), a non-profit social services organization, can no longer choose to receive assistance completing their mail ballots from LUPE employees whom they know and trust and who are compensated for delivering assistance. This petition presents the following question: Whether Section 208 preempts a state law that prohibits eligible voters from compensating their chosen assisters or from choosing trusted assisters who are compensated.