Justia Election Law Opinion Summaries

In the case brought before the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon, two petitioners, Hugh Ady and Reed Scott-Schwalbach, challenged the Attorney General's certified ballot title for Initiative Petition 30 (2024) (IP 30). IP 30 proposed to establish a program providing state funding to families incurring "qualified expenses" for educating their children outside of the public school system. The funding would have been provided through a new "Education Savings Account Program" and would have been available to households having an adjusted gross income of $125,000 or less.The petitioners raised several objections to the ballot title, which the court mostly rejected. However, the court agreed with petitioner Scott-Schwalbach that the "yes" result statement and the summary were inaccurate in stating that IP 30 "allows additional virtual charter programs." The court clarified that state law doesn't cap virtual charter programs, but rather enrollment in those programs. IP 30 proposed to increase the enrollment cap, not the number of programs. As such, the court referred the "yes" result statement and the summary back to the Attorney General for correction. View "Ady v. Rosenblum" on Justia Law

In this case in the Supreme Court of the State of Alaska, a candidate who narrowly lost an election brought a case alleging that the Division of Elections had improperly allowed some voters to cast ballots without meeting constitutional and statutory residency requirements. The court upheld the election results in favor of the opposing candidate and dismissed the losing candidate's lawsuit. The winning candidate then moved for attorney’s fees and costs, asserting that certain claims made in the election contest were frivolous or made in bad faith. The court agreed and awarded the winning candidate full attorney’s fees and costs related to those claims. The losing candidate appealed, arguing that he was protected from an adverse attorney’s fees award as a constitutional claimant and that the court failed to follow proper procedure for imposing fees and costs as sanctions. The Alaska Supreme Court held that the unsuccessful candidate’s constitutional claims were not frivolous or made in bad faith and reversed the award of attorney’s fees and costs. However, the court ruled that the unsuccessful candidate is not exempt from sanctions for violating court rules after notice and an opportunity to be heard and remanded for further proceedings to determine whether sanctions could be awarded for violations of court rules. View "Pruitt v. State of Alaska, Division of Elections" on Justia Law

The Supreme Court of the State of Alaska reviewed challenges to a redistricting plan adopted by the Alaska Redistricting Board. After the 2020 census, the Board adopted a plan for 40 House of Representative districts and 20 Senate districts. Several entities filed challenges to this plan, arguing that certain districts were unconstitutional due to violations of due process and gerrymandering. The superior court found two House districts and one Senate district to be unconstitutional and directed the Board to undertake further redistricting efforts. Four petitions for review were filed with the Supreme Court.The Court affirmed the superior court's ruling regarding the Senate district, but reversed the ruling regarding the two House districts. The Court found that the Board did not violate the "hard look" requirement, which requires that the Board seriously consider all salient problems and engage in reasoned decision-making. The Court also held that the Board sufficiently complied with the Hickel process, a procedural sequence that ensures the redistricting satisfies federal law without unnecessarily compromising the Alaska Constitution.Furthermore, the Court determined that the Board did not have discriminatory intent in its actions, and that the minor deviations in population among various districts did not violate the "one person, one vote" requirement. The Court also concluded that the Board did not violate the provision requiring each House district to contain a population as near as practicable to the quotient obtained by dividing the population of the state by forty.Regarding the Senate district, the Court affirmed the superior court’s conclusion that the relevant Senate district pairings were an unconstitutional gerrymander. The Court remanded the case for further redistricting efforts consistent with its order. View "In the Matter of the 2021 Redistricting Cases" on Justia Law

In the case before the Court of Appeal of the State of California Fourth Appellate District Division Three, the court evaluated the legality of three members of the City of Mission Viejo City Council holding office after their elected terms had expired. The three council members, Ed Sachs, Wendy Bucknum, and Greg Raths, were elected in November 2018 for two-year terms that expired in December 2020. These two-year terms, rather than the traditional four-year terms, were part of a stipulated judgment to remedy violations of the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 (CVRA). The judgment intended to implement a system of cumulative voting for the city council, with all five seats up for election in November 2020. However, cumulative voting could not be implemented in time for the 2020 election, and the three councilmembers did not stand for reelection but continued to hold office after their terms expired.Michael Schlesinger, the plaintiff, brought a quo warranto lawsuit, with the permission of the California Attorney General, to have the three councilmembers removed from office. The councilmembers argued that they were entitled to hold office until the next cumulative voting election in 2022. However, the court ruled that the councilmembers were elected for two-year terms, and the stipulated judgment did not extend their terms contingent on the implementation of cumulative voting. As a result, the court affirmed the quo warranto judgment that Sachs, Bucknum, and Raths were holding office unlawfully after their terms expired in December 2020. View "P. ex rel. Schlesinger v. Sachs" on Justia Law

In the case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the Independence-Alliance Party of Minnesota, a minor political party, challenged a Minnesota statute that required voters to swear an oath before signing a minor-party nominating petition. The party argued that this requirement violated the First Amendment as it deterred voters from signing nominating petitions, thus, burdening the expressive associational rights of minor political parties, their members, and their candidates.The court, applying the Anderson-Burdick framework, held that the burden imposed by the oath requirement was insubstantial at most and did not warrant strict scrutiny. The court reasoned that the oath only required potential signatories to express their present intent not to vote at the primary election for the office for which the nominating petition is made, and did not preclude them from changing their intentions in the future. The court also reasoned that voters were expected to understand the law, and therefore, understand the oath's actual meaning. It also noted that the party's complaint did not plausibly allege that the oath requirement prevented signatories from signing nominating petitions with any meaningful frequency.The court held that any insubstantial burden imposed by the oath requirement was justified by legitimate state interests, such as protecting the democratic voting process by requiring a preliminary showing of support for a candidate, preventing the distortion of the electoral process, promoting election integrity and reliability, and discouraging party raiding. Therefore, the court affirmed the dismissal of the Independence-Alliance Party's complaint. View "Independence-Alliance Party of Minn. v. Simon" on Justia Law

In this case addressing the General Assembly districting plan adopted by the Ohio Redistricting Commission in September 2023 the Supreme Court granted motions to dismiss brought by Petitioners, who filed motions for leave to file objections instanter to the plan and denied motions to vacate and for leave to file objections, holding that dismissal was warranted.The Commission adopted a new redistricting plan in September 2023 by a unanimous vote. Petitioners moved for leave to file objections. Respondents, members of the Commission, moved to dismiss the cases and to vacate the court's orders declaring the districting plan adopted by the General Assembly in September 2021 as unconstitutional. The Supreme Court granted the motions to dismiss, denied the motions to vacate as moot, and denied the motions for leave to file objections to the September 2023 plan, holding that now that the Commission has adopted a plan with bipartisan support, the facts before the Court bore no resemblance to the allegations in Petitioners' complaints. View "League of Women Voters of Ohio v. Ohio Redistricting Comm'n" on Justia Law

The issue this case presented for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's review was whether the Commonwealth Court abused its discretion in ordering Appellants, Eric Sloss and Sandor Zelekovitz, (“Objectors”) to pay the counsel fees of Appellee Michael Doyle, a candidate for the Republican nomination for Representative of Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District (“Candidate”) in the May 17, 2022 Primary Election. These fees were incurred during the litigation of Objectors’ petition to set aside Candidate’s nominating petitions for lack of a sufficient number of legally valid signatures from Republican electors. After review, the Supreme Court concluded the Commonwealth Court abused its discretion in ordering Objectors to pay such fees. The Court therefore reversed its order in that respect. View "In Re: Nom. Michael Doyle" on Justia Law

Ohio requires that political parties elect a central committee composed of various party members throughout the state. Ohio Rev. Code 3517.01 and establishes rules for the gender composition and the term length of the central committee members, requiring two members, “one a man and one a woman, representing either each congressional district in the state or each senatorial district in the state. Ames, a member of the Ohio Republican Party, was the male representative of the 32nd District on the ORP Central Committee. Although he no longer serves on the ORP Central Committee, Ames alleges that he intends to run in the future and that both the gender and term-length provisions violate his associational rights by interfering with party members’ ability to self-govern and freely choose their leadership.The district court concluded that Ames lacked standing and dismissed his claims. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, noting that independent of the statute, the ORP’s internal rules contain an identical gender provision and a compatible two-year term-length provision. Ames did not challenge the ORP’s ability to maintain those internal rules, nor did he present any allegation or evidence that the ORP would change its internal practices in the absence of 3517.03, so Ames failed to allege a redressable injury. View "Ames v. LaRose" on Justia Law

The Arkansas NAACP and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, two advocacy groups with members living throughout the state, oppose the new map. They sued nearly everyone who had anything to do with it under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. After reviewing the text, history, and structure of the Voting Rights Act, the district court concluded that private parties cannot enforce Section 2. The enforcement power belonged solely to the Attorney General of the United States, who was given five days to join the lawsuit. When he declined, the case was dismissed.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court held that Congress did not give private plaintiffs the ability to sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The court explained that in substance, the advocacy groups asked the court to excuse the absence of text because legislative history answers the question. The court explained that at one point, this approach may have held sway. But here, the legislative history does not complete the statutory story. Rather, it tells a different story, one not reflected in the text of anything Congress passed. To the extent that legislative history can be helpful in any case, this one is not it. View "AR State Conference NAACP v. AR Board of Apportionment" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs challenge the Louisiana Legislature’s 2022 redistricting map for electing the state’s six members of the United States House of Representatives. The district court preliminarily enjoined use of that map for the 2022 congressional elections. The United States Supreme Court stayed that injunction, pending resolution of a case involving Alabama’s congressional redistricting plan. About a year later, the Supreme Court resolved the Alabama case.In review of the Louisiana Legislature's 2022 redistricting plan, the Fifth Circuit held that district court did not clearly err in its necessary fact-findings nor commit legal error in its conclusions that the Plaintiffs were likely to succeed in proving a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. However, the court found the injunction is no longer necessary. View "Robinson v. Ardoin" on Justia Law