In Baten v. McMaster, The Fourth Circuit held that South Carolina’s winner-take-all system does not violate the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, or § 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In its decision, the court concluded that the appellants’ challenge to South Carolina’s winner-take-all system was justiciable and that the appellants had Article III standing. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court’s judgment.

In United States v. Curry, the Fourth Circuit held that the exigent circumstances doctrine did not justify the suspicionless stop of the defendant. The exigent circumstances doctrine, the majority opinion noted, typically involves emergencies justifying a warrantless search of a home, not an investigatory stop of a person.

In Buscemi v. Bell, the Fourth Circuit held that two candidates unaffiliated with a political party and one voter seeking to cast votes for write-in candidates lacked standing to challenge North Carolina’s requirements that an unaffiliated candidate be a “qualified voter” and that a write-in candidate submit a certain number of signatures before votes cast for that write-in candidate will be counted.