 WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Wednesday night that Alabama state officials can prohibit local counties from offering curbside voting to people with disabilities and others worried about the coronavirus pandemic. The courts conservative justices granted a request by Alabamas secretary of state to put on hold decisions by lower courts allowing counties that wanted to provide the service to proceed. The vote was 5 to 3, with the courts liberals dissenting. We should not substitute the district courts reasonable, record-based findings of fact with our own intuitions about the risks of traditional in-person voting during this pandemic or the ability of willing local officials to implement adequate curbside voting procedures, wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. The majority that granted the stay did not explain its reasoning, which is common in emergency actions. The Supreme Court has not met in person since March because of the pandemic. But in this election year, the justices have found themselves refereeing a number of coronavirus-related legal battles over election procedures, and there are more to come. Earlier this week, an evenly divided court left in place a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that extended the time for counting mail-in ballots because of the surge in voters who want to vote remotely. In Alabama, a U.S. district judge had said there was nothing in state law that restricts local jurisdictions from offering the curbside accommodation and approved it along with other coronavirus provisions. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit put most of the judges order on hold, but not the provision on curbside voting. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican, said... 