AUSTIN, Texas (CN) — The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals released three rulings Wednesday, upholding Texas' voting restrictions passed by GOP lawmakers.
The first case concerns Texas’ House Bill 25, passed in 2017, which banned straight-ticket voting in the state. The Texas Alliance for Retired Americans (TARA), a state chapter of a nationwide retiree advocacy group, and Sylvia Bruni, the Webb County chair for the Texas Democratic Party, filed suit against Texas Secretary of State John Scott, arguing that by eliminating the option for people to vote for all the candidates belonging to a single party contributed to long lines at the polls.
In their original suit, the plaintiffs argued this would violate the First, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
A district court issued a preliminary injunction on Sept. 25, 2020, blocking the law from being implemented during the general election.
On appeal, the Secretary of State, John Scott, argued that the lawsuit is barred by sovereign immunity, and the plaintiffs failed to present a case that could overcome such protection. In addition, the secretary made the case that, under the Ex Parte Young doctrine, he is not the proper defendant since he is not responsible for enforcing HB 25.
The appeals court agreed, finding that enforcement of the statute is the responsibility of local election officials and not the secretary of state. Circuit Judges Stuart Duncan and Don Willett, both Donald Trump appointees, ruled to reverse the injunction placed on the state and find that the secretary of state was not a proper defendant in the case.
Duncan wrote in his nine-page opinion, “Plaintiffs rely on the Secretary’s ‘expansive duties’ in enforcing election laws—such as his role as ‘chief election officer,’ his duty to ‘obtain and maintain uniformity in the law's application, and his authority to ‘take appropriate action to ‘protect voting rights. None of these statutes creates the relevant connection between the Secretary and HB 25.”
Ruling similarly, Judges Duncan and Willett threw out a separate case concerning the process of voting by mail in Texas.
Plaintiffs in the case, including TARA and the state NAACP conference, argued that provisions of the election code that require voters to pay for postage, set postmark deadlines and create signature verification standards violate the First, Fourteenth and Twenty-Fourth Amendments.
The Secretary of State moved to dismiss the claims on the ground of sovereign immunity. Denying the secretary’s motion to dismiss, the district court found that because the secretary is responsible for managing the state’s elections, he is the proper defendant in the suit. Scott immediately appealed the court’s denial of his sovereign immunity claim.
Writing the court's majority opinion, Duncan found that the secretary is not a proper defendant because he is not responsible for enforcing provisions of the election code when it comes to voting by mail. In this case, Duncan directed the lower court to dismiss the plaintiff's claims outright, having found that Scott is not the proper defendant in this case as well.
Finally, the court ruled nearly identically in a case filed by voting rights groups including the League of Women Voters of Texas, against the secretary of state over the state’s signature verification system.
The plaintiffs, in that case, argued that the system violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Essentially, they alleged that requiring the signatures to match on a mail-in ballot to the signature on file with the secretary of state would result in the ballots of people with disabilities being thrown out.
The district court again denied the secretary of state’s motion to dismiss and issued an injunction in the plaintiff's favor.
Once again, Duncan and Willett concluded that Scott is not responsible for enforcing the state's signature verification system and therefore he is not the proper defendant in the case.
"Plaintiffs also argue the Secretary’s enforcement authority is shown because the Secretary has issued various advisories to local officials about ballot verification… we disagree,” wrote Duncan. “‘Enforcement’ for Young purposes means ‘compulsion or constraint.’”
Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham, a Ronald Reagan appointee, in his dissent of all three rulings, concluded that the claims raised by the plaintiffs were not barred by sovereign immunity.
“The majority continues this court’s effort to shrink the role of Ex parte Young, by overly narrow readings of the state officer’s duty to enforce Texas’s election laws,” wrote Higginbotham.
As of now, plaintiffs in the three cases have yet to comment on the Fifth Circuit's rulings. The Texas Secretary of State’s office has also not responded to a request for comment.
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