Indiana Voter Purge Law Remains Blocked per 7th Circuit Ruling

CHICAGO (CN) — A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a decision blocking enforcement of an Indiana law that voter rights advocates say illegally purges voters from the rolls without adhering to federally mandated election law safeguards.

Legal fights over how Indiana removes the registrations of voters who may have moved have carried out since 2017, with voter rights groups mostly winning protections against voter purges in court. On Monday, these groups added U.S. Circuit Judge Diane Wood’s 31-page decision to that list of victories.

The groups say two laws in recent years — SB 422 and the more recent SEA 334, or Act 334 — circumvent rules put in place by the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA, meant to govern the fair and safe maintenance of voter registrations and target minority voters in particular. The Indiana government and proponents of the laws say they are meant to promptly correct discrepancies in the state’s voter registrations in the name of defending against election fraud.

SB 422, which allowed Indiana to toss registrations based on results from the multistate Crosscheck system without notifying the voter and without first being asked by a voter who sought removal from the state’s roll, was blocked by the 7th Circuit in 2019 after being shot down by U.S. District Judge Tanya Pratt, who agreed with Common Cause Indiana, a nonpartisan group that primarily opposes gerrymandering and voting restrictions, that the law violated the NVRA.

Indiana ditched that statute and wrote changes into a new version, SEA 344, in part by moving away from the Crosscheck system and enacting a new, similar system called the Indiana Data Enhancement Association, or IDEA, which would find duplicate voters. The new law contained language about receiving written information about those voters.

But the League of Women Voters of Indiana and others persisted against the law, prompting Pratt to nix it in 2020. The state appealed once again, and arguments were held before the 7th Circuit panel in April anticipating Monday’s decision.

Wood, a Bill Clinton appointee, said that Indiana had gone some distance in fixing what was illegal about SB 422 with SEA 334, but she ultimately still considered the new statute to be in violation of NVRA safeguards.

“What Act 334 took with the left hand, it gave away with the right, and the net result is continued inconsistency with the NVRA,” Wood wrote on behalf of the 7th Circuit’s three-judge panel.

Largely at issue in April’s arguments and Monday’s decision is a subsection of SEA 334 concerning what kind of written information would constitute authorization from a voter allowing their registration to be removed. The appeals court seemed to approve of information received from another state’s voter registration office, but drew the line at information forwarded to county officials by the Indiana Election Division, the Hoosier State’s central election authority.

The judges said this latter situation could allow officials to circumvent the NVRA’s requirement that a voter authorize their registration to be removed.

“The upshot of [the subsection’s] language is this: any time a county election official receives ‘written notice’ from Indiana election officials, county officials must presume … that the voter has authorized the cancellation of his Indiana registration,” even if Indiana does not actually have proof that the voter authorized it, Wood wrote for the 7th Circuit panel.

She added that the subsection also allows the registration to be cancelled immediately in such cases without having to provide the voter with notice while the state waits on confirmation.

“Just like Act 442, Act 334 impermissibly allows Indiana to cancel a voter’s registration without either direct communication from the voter or compliance with the NVRA’s notice-and-waiting procedures,” Wood wrote.

Indiana had previously argued that the statute is ambiguous and therefore can have applications compliant with the NVRA under to the state’s interpretation, but the 7th Circuit found no such ambiguities in the statutory text.

However, judges were responsive to the Indiana government’s assertion that the lower court’s injunction of SEA 334 was overly broad and vague.

“We agree with the state that the district court’s injunction swept too broadly and did not adequately define what exactly should qualify as a direct communication from the voter,” Wood said.

Upon remand, the judge ordered the district court to revise its injunction, finding that the district court went too far in enjoining enforcement of other parts of Indiana law that allow for registration cancellation in compliance with the NVRA. Wood also said the lower court must clarify, on remand, that voters’ requests to cancel their registration may be forwarded from other states when the authorization form bears the voter’s signature.

Wood was joined on the Seventh Circuit panel by U.S. Circuit Judges Michael Brennan and Amy St. Eve, both appointed by Donald Trump in 2018.

Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, touted Monday’s ruling as a “victory” for Indiana’s voters.

“Voter roll purges are a form of voter suppression and prevent everyday Hoosiers from having their voices heard at the ballot box. We are pleased that the U.S. Court of Appeals has come down on the side of the voters, protecting their right to remain on the voter rolls and participate in our democracy,” Vaughn said in a press release.

The office of Indiana Secretary of State Holli Sullivan, a Republican named as the defendant in the cases underlying Monday’s ruling, and a member of the Indiana Election Division’s legal team could not be immediately reached for comment after business hours on Monday.

Follow @cnsjkelly

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Email *

Submit