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Bush v Gore

Equal Protection Clause

Seven justices agreed that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using differing standards of determining a valid vote in different counties, causing an "unequal evaluation of ballots in various respects".
The per curiam opinion (representing the views of Justices Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas) specifically cited that:
Palm Beach County changed standards for counting dimpled chads several times during the counting process;
Broward County used less restrictive standards than Palm Beach County;
Miami-Dade County’s recount of rejected ballots did not include all precincts;
The Florida Supreme Court did not specify who would recount the ballots.
The per curiam opinion also identified an inconsistency with the fact that the Florida statewide recount of rejected ballots was limited to undervotes. The opinion implied that a constitutionally valid recount would include not only Florida's undervotes, but also its overvotes.
The per curiam expressed concern that the limited scope of Florida’s recount would mean that, unlike some undervotes found to be reclaimable, valid votes among the overvotes would not be reclaimed. Furthermore, if a machine incorrectly reads an overvote as a valid vote for one of two marked candidates instead of rejecting it, Florida would wrongly count what should be an invalid vote.
Justices Breyer and Souter disagreed with the majority in regard to this (in spite of their agreement with the majority that differing standards for counting ballots in different counties was unconstitutional) and did not see any problem in Florida's decision to limit its recount to undervotes.
In dissenting, Justice Ginsburg wrote that, for better or worse, disparities were a part of all elections and that if an equal-protection argument applied in any way, it surely applied more to black voters.