The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled Friday that election workers and voters in Texas are not required to wear masks at polling locations. This ruling overturns a previous federal court order mandating that masks are worn at polling locations in Texas.

The lawsuit was initially brought by Mi Familia Vota, the Texas Branch of the NAACP, and a Latina woman, Guadalupe Torres, challenging Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s executive order granting an exemption from mask mandates at poll sites. They argued that the governor’s order discriminates against Black and Latino voters by forcing them to choose between their right to vote and their health and safety. US District Judge Jason Pulliam granted the plaintiffs’ request for relief and ruled that the citizens’ right to vote outweighs the state’s harm in facilitating the changes.

However, a three-judge panel dismissed Judge Pulliam’s finding, ruling in favor of the order exempting polling sites from Texas’s general mask mandate for indoor locations. The panel first reasoned that “court changes of election laws close in time to the election are strongly disfavored.” Further, the judges recognized that “the Governor and Secretary offered declarations from five election officials who unanimously agreed that changing the election rules to require voters to wear masks this close to the election would be costly and confusing.”

The federal judges went on to say that the district court’s reasoning was flawed. Contrary to Judge Pulliam’s finding, they held that “the Governor and Secretary’s unrebutted evidence establishes that changing the election rules in the midst of voting would create disparate treatment of voters, and significant confusion and difficulty for voters and poll workers.” Notably, Texas has been early voting for over two weeks, and “[m]ore than nine million voters have already cast ballots in Texas.” The judges found that because of the record voter turnout, the lower court’s ruling “improperly altered election rules on the eve of the election.”