CASE SUMMARY

On April 15, 2016, several Arizona voters and Democratic Party organizations filed a federal lawsuit against Arizona’s Secretary of State and other election officials challenging Arizona’s law restricting mail ballot harvesting and a regulation barring provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct from being counted as violating the U.S. Constitution and federal Voting Rights Act (“VRA”). Plaintiffs argued the ballot harvesting law was enacted with discriminatory intent in violation of VRA § 2 and the 15th Amendment and that both the law and regulation resulted in disproportionate burdens on minority voters’ right to vote in violation of VRA § 2, the 1st Amendment, and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. They sought a declaratory judgment the law and regulation were unlawful and a permanent injunction barring their enforcement.

  • On May 8, 2018, the federal district court upheld the law and regulation as valid. The plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit the next day.
  • On September 12, 2018, a Ninth Circuit three-judge panel affirmed the district court’s decision.
  • On January 2, 2019, a majority of Ninth Circuit judges voted to invalidate the three-judge panel’s decision and rehear the case en banc.
  • On January 27, 2020, the en banc Ninth Circuit reversed and struck down both the law and regulation as unlawful. It found both the law and regulation had discriminatory results in violation of VRA § 2 and that the law was enacted with discriminatory intent in violation of VRA § 2 and the 15th Amendment. Defendants appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on April 27, 2020.
  • SCOTUS heard oral arguments on March 2, 2021.
  • On July 1, 2021, SCOTUS reversed the Ninth Circuit’s decision and remanded the case finding that neither Arizona’s law nor regulation violated VRA § 2 because the minimal burdens these time, place, and manner restrictions imposed did not lead to Arizona’s electoral system being less open to minority voters. Justice Alito’s majority opinion explained that many of the totality of circumstances factors used to analyze racial vote dilution claims under § 2 are “plainly inapplicable” to challenges to facially neutral time, place, and manner election rules, with their only purpose in this context being to establish past discrimination and whether those effects remain today. The court provided a list of relevant circumstances for analyzing claims like these, including: the size of the burden imposed by the rule beyond the “usual burdens of voting;” the historical and current usage of the challenged rule or practice by the state and its usage in other jurisdictions; the size of the racial or ethnic disparities in its impact; and the strength of the state’s interest for adopting the rule. Additionally, the majority stated that such rules must be assessed in the context of the state’s entire election system, including the availability of other voting methods. Finally, the majority explicitly rejected that disparate impact alone was sufficient to prove a violation of § 2 and the additional requirement that a state show the rule at issue was the least restrictive means to accomplish their policy objective.

CASE LIBRARY

U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona - No. 2:16-CV-01065 [formerly Feldman v. Arizona Secretary of State's Office]

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit- No. 16-16698 [first interlocutory appeal]

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit- No. 16-16865 [second interlocutory appeal]

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit - No. 18-15845 [formerly DNC v. Hobbs]

U.S. Supreme Court - No. 19-1257 [consolidated with No. 19-1258]