A federal appeals court has declined to strike down the Texas voting bill known as Senate Bill 1. In a split decision, the three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said the plaintiffs in all three suits named Texas Secretary of State John Scott as the sole defendant, and that Scott has no enforcement abilities over the areas covered by the suits.
The suits, which had plaintiffs including the Texas State Conference of the NAACP, the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans and the League of Women Voters.
In one complaint the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities took aim at the signature verification for mail-in ballots. A second group targeted mail-in ballot regulations in general and the third took aim at the elimination of straight-ticket voting.
A federal appeals court has declined to strike down the Texas voting bill known as Senate Bill 1. In a split decision, the three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said the plaintiffs in all three suits named Texas Secretary of State John Scott as the sole defendant, and that Scott has no enforcement abilities over the areas covered by the suits.
The suits, which had plaintiffs including the Texas State Conference of the NAACP, the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans and the League of Women Voters.
In one complaint the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities took aim at the signature verification for mail-in ballots. A second group targeted mail-in ballot regulations in general and the third took aim at the elimination of straight-ticket voting.
In each suit, Justices Kyle Duncan and Don Willett said Scott was not the proper defendant.
“We conclude that the plaintiffs’ suit is barred by sovereign immunity because the Secretary does not enforce the challenged provisions,” one of the opinions said. The other two opinions had similar language.
In three dissenting opinions, Justice Patrick Higginbotham chided his colleagues for dismissing the suits on the basis of sovereign immunity instead of tackling the merits of the law.
“In sum, I am persuaded that these cases ought not fail on standing or sovereign immunity grounds," Higgenbotham wrote. "Rather, we should have fully considered the merits of the plaintiffs’ arguments, especially where these cases also present claims under the Voting Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities Act, thin though they all may be.”
The ruling puzzled UNT Dallas professor of law Brian Owsley, who wondered if the secretary of state was not the person in charge of enforcing election laws, who is?
“Seemingly, you would think, in an election contest, the person who oversees the elections on a statewide level would be the person you would want to sue in order to remedy the issue. And the court, here, is saying ‘No, you got the wrong person,'" Owsley said.
Temporary injunctions in the cases were lifted and the cases were sent back to a U.S. District Judge for further action.
But the case may not be over, according to Owsley.
“They’re saying ‘you got the wrong defendant.’ And so, OK, we’ll figure out who the right defendant is because we’ll sue everybody and then you’ll either have to tell us there is no defendant, which would be an absurd result, or we’re going to win it with them.”
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