Why would it not affect the 2020 election, is that a separate lawsuit  No it's one lawsuit that says basically (and I'm REALLY oversimplifying here, because so far we're only looking at the request for emergency relief, not the lawsuit itself) that we should reconsider how we've been interpreting one piece of election law, and that the new interpretation should be applied to the 2020 election. Alito has (obviously on purpose - he is neither stupid nor careless and this is first-year law school stuff) scheduled the next steps so that the reinterpretating will happen (if the court chooses to take it on by granting cert) after the 2020 election so that the 2020 election is run under the existing interpretation.