This database consolidates and tracks litigation concerning the effect of the pandemic on election law. The purpose of this tool is to provide an interactive list of relevant cases that can be searched by issue, court, status, and jurisdiction.
Case Details
Democratic National Committee v. Reagan (also titled Feldman v. Arizona Secretary of State)
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Democratic National Committee v. Reagan (also titled Feldman v. Arizona Secretary of State), No. 2:16-cv-01065- DLR (D. Ariz), 2017 WL 11503449 (intervenor MTD denied) 2017 WL 840693 (MTD unnecessary parties granted in part) 948 F.3d 989 2018 WL 2191664 329 F.Supp.3d 824 (affirmed by 904 F.3d 686) 2018 WL 10455189 (Denying PI); (rev'd and remanded by 948 F.3d 989) |
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| Case Summary | Plaintiff registered voters sued state and county officials alleging that the allocation of polling locations discriminated against Hispanics and African Americans in violation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the First Amendment. Plaintiffs challenged (1) Arizona’s policy of wholly discarding, rather than counting or partially counting, ballots cast out-of-precint, and (2) H.B. 2023, a statute that, subject to certain exceptions, criminalizes the collection of another person’s early ballot. Plaintiffs sought an order enjoining defendants from allocating polling locations for the 2016 general election without first submitting the allocation plan to this Court for review and approval, from rejecting provisional ballots solely because they were cast in the wrong precinct or polling location, and from enforcing H.B. 2023 that made it a felony to turn a signed and sealed ballot into the county registrar on behalf of another voter. | |
| Filed | 04/15/2016 | |
| State | Arizona | |
| Type of Court | Federal | |
| Circuit | Ninth Circuit | |
| Status | Active | |
| Last Updated | 03/13/2021 | |
| Issue Tag(s) | In-Person Voting COVID Concern (Number/Location of Polling Places) Polling locations (not COVID related) |
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| Complaint(s) | 04/15/2016: Complaint filed. | |
| Dispositive Ruling(s) | 09/23/2016: Order/Ruling, "After full briefing, the district court denied the motion on September 23, 2016, on the ground that Feldman was not likely to succeed on the merits of any of her claims and had therefore also not shown a likelihood of irreparable harm. As to the § 2 claim, the district court reviewed the totality of the evidentiary record and found no evidence of a cognizable disparity between minority and non-minority voters. The district court held that Feldman was unlikely to succeed on her Fourteenth Amendment claim because H.B. 2023’s burden on voting was minimal and justified by the State’s interests in preventing absentee voter fraud and the perception of fraud. As to Feldman’s First Amendment claims, the district court held that collecting ballots is not an expressive activity and that even if it were, the State’s regulatory interests were sufficient to justify the slight burden that H.B. 2023 imposes. The district court likewise ruled that Feldman was unlikely to succeed on her partisan fencing claim." | |
Democratic National Committee v. Reagan, No. 16-16698 (9th Cir.) |
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| Case Summary | In April 2016, Leslie Feldman and other appellants brought an action in district court challenging Arizona House Bill 2023 (H.B. 2023), which precludes individuals who do not fall into one of several exceptions (e.g., election officials, mail carriers, family members, household members, and specified caregivers) from collecting early ballots from another person. See 2016 Ariz. Legis. Serv. Ch. 5, § 1 (H.B. 2023) (West) (codified at Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 16-1005(H)–(I)). According to Feldman, this state statute violates § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 52 U.S.C. § 10301, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the First Amendment because, among other things, it disproportionately and adversely impacts minorities, unjustifiably burdens the right to vote, and interferes with the freedom of association. After the district court denied Feldman’s motion for a preliminary injunction, Feldman filed this emergency interlocutory appeal. | |
| Filed | 09/23/2016 | |
| State | Arizona | |
| Type of Court | Federal | |
| Circuit | Ninth Circuit | |
| Status | Active | |
| Last Updated | 03/13/2021 | |
| Issue Tag(s) | In-Person Voting COVID Concern (Number/Location of Polling Places) | |
| Dispositive Ruling(s) | 10/17/2016: Appellant Brief | |
| 10/28/2016: Order/Ruling, The panel affirmed because the district court did not abuse its discretion | ||
Democratic National Committee v. Reagan, No. 16-16865 (9th Cir.) |
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| Case Summary | In April 2016, Leslie Feldman and other appellants brought an action in district court challenging Arizona House Bill 2023 (H.B. 2023), which precludes individuals who do not fall into one of several exceptions (e.g., election officials, mail carriers, family members, household members, and specified caregivers) from collecting early ballots from another person. See 2016 Ariz. Legis. Serv. Ch. 5, § 1 (H.B. 2023) (West) (codified at Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 16-1005(H)–(I)). According to Feldman, this state statute violates § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 52 U.S.C. § 10301, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the First Amendment because, among other things, it disproportionately and adversely impacts minorities, unjustifiably burdens the right to vote, and interferes with the freedom of association. The district court denied Feldman’s motion for a preliminary injunction. | |
| Filed | 10/17/2016 | |
| State | Arizona | |
| Type of Court | Federal | |
| Circuit | Ninth Circuit | |
| Status | Active | |
| Last Updated | 08/03/2021 | |
| Issue Tag(s) | In-Person Voting COVID Concern (Number/Location of Polling Places) | |
| Dispositive Ruling(s) | 10/17/2016: Appellant Brief | |
| 06/01/2018: Order/Ruling, Dismissed as moot. | ||
Democratic National Committee v. Reagan, sub nom. DNC v. Hobbs, No. 18-15845 (9th Cir.), 840 F.3d 1057 (9th Cir. 2016); rehearing en banc granted by Feldman v. Arizona Sec'y of State, 841 F.3d 791 (9th Cir. 2016) 904 F.3d 686 (9th Cir. 2018) 911 F.3d 942 (9th Cir. 2019) (granting rehearing en banc) 948 F.3d 989 (9th Cir. 2020) (rev'd and remanding 329 F. Supp. 3d 824) |
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| Case Summary | The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other appellants sued the state of Arizona, raising several challenges under the First, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), 52 U.S.C. § 10301, against two state election practices: (1) Arizona’s longstanding requirement that inperson voters cast their ballots in their assigned precinct, which Arizona enforces by not counting ballots cast in the wrong precinct (referred to by DNC as the out-of-precinct or OOP policy), and (2) H.B. 2023, a recent legislative enactment which precludes most third parties from collecting early ballots from voters. After a lengthy trial involving the testimony of 51 witnesses and over 230 evidentiary exhibits, the district court rejected each of DNC’s claims. | |
| Filed | 07/20/2018 | |
| State | Arizona | |
| Type of Court | Federal | |
| Circuit | Ninth Circuit | |
| Status | Active | |
| Last Updated | 03/13/2021 | |
| Issue Tag(s) | In-Person Voting COVID Concern (Number/Location of Polling Places) | |
| Dispositive Ruling(s) | 09/12/2018: Order/Ruling, A divided Ninth Circuit panel affirmed. Judge Ikuta’s majority opinion noted that precinct-based voting is a “common electoral practice” that imposes only “‘the usual burdens of voting,’” and that the DNC lacked evidence that many voters use ballot-collection services. As to discriminatory intent, the majority stressed that the law requires “that the legislature acted with racial motives, not merely partisan motives,” concluding that “the record does not contain the sort of evidence that has led other courts to infer the legislature was acting with discriminatory intent[.]” Chief Judge Thomas dissented. | |
| 01/02/2019: Order/Ruling, Order that case be reheard en banc | ||
| 01/27/2020: Order/Ruling, In an opinion authored by Judge Fletcher, the majority held (7-4) that the challenged provisions violated Section 2’s results test, and (6-5) that the ballot-collection law was enacted with discriminatory intent, in violation of both Section 2 and the Fifteenth Amendment. In so holding, the majority concluded that Section 2 is implicated where “more than a de minimis number of minority voters” “are disparately affected” by a voting policy. In finding that the ballot-collection law was enacted with discriminatory intent, the majority acknowledged that many proponents of the law “had a sincere, though mistaken, non-race-based belief that there had been fraud in third-party ballot collection, and that the problem needed to be addressed.” The majority imputed racial motives to the legislature. While acknowledging that “[f]orbidding third-party ballot collection protects against potential voter fraud,” the majority reasoned that “such protection is not necessary, or even appropriate, when there is a long history of third-party ballot collection with no evidence, ever, of any fraud and such fraud is already illegal under existing Arizona law.” The decision prompted two dissents, each joined by four judges. Judge O’Scannlain rejected the majority’s implicit suggestion “that any facially neutral policy which may result in some statistical disparity is necessarily discriminatory[.]” He also noted that “[a]necdotal evidence of how voters have chosen to vote in the past does not establish that voters are unable to vote in other ways or would be burdened by having to do so.” And he criticized the majority’s reliance on one senator’s motives, noting that “each legislator is an independent actor,” that most “sincere[ly] belie[ved] that voter fraud needed to be addressed,” and that “the underlying allegations of voter fraud did not need to be true” to defeat any “inference of pretext[.]” Judge Bybee stressed that the challenged rules are ordinary “time, place, and manner restrictions” designed “to maintain the integrity of the democratic system.’” Arizona’s out-of-precinct policy, he explained, is “a traditional rule, common to the majority of American states.” Arizona’s ballot collection rule not only is “substantially similar” to provisions “in many other states,” but “follows precisely the recommendation of the bipartisan Carter−Baker Commission[.]” On February 11, the Ninth Circuit stayed its mandate pending certiorari. On April 9, petitioner State of Arizona was granted intervention. | ||
| 02/11/2020: Order/Ruling, Stay granted for writ of certiorari | ||
Democratic National Committee v. Reagan, No. 19-1258 (Sup. Ct.) |
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| Case Summary | Petition for Writ of Certiorari. Questions presented: 1. Does Arizona’s out-of-precinct policy violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act? 2. Does Arizona’s ballot-collection law violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act or the Fifteenth Amendment? | |
| Filed | 04/27/2020 | |
| State | Arizona | |
| Type of Court | Federal | |
| Circuit | US Supreme Court | |
| Status | Active | |
| Last Updated | 03/13/2021 | |
| Issue Tag(s) | Vote-by-Mail (Claim that Mail Voting Leads to Fraud and/or Vote Dilution, Other Vote-by-Mail Issue) | |
| Dispositive Ruling(s) | 04/27/2020: Petition | |
| 10/02/2020: Other, Supreme Court granted certiorari on 10/2. The three consolidated cases are: Feldman v. Arizona Secretary of State, No. 2:16-cv-1065 (D. Ariz.); DNC v. Hobbs, No. 18-15845 (9th Cir.); Arizona Republican Party v. DNC, No. 19-1258 (S. Ct.). | ||
Arizona Republican Party v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19-1258 (S. Ct) |
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| Case Summary | There are two issues that respondent, the State of Arizona, the Secretary of State, the Governor, and the Attorney General raises on petition for certiorari. First, whether Arizona's out-of-precinct policy violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act; and whether Arizona’s ballot-collection law violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act or the Fifteenth Amendment. The original petitioners, the Arizona Democratic Party and its national affiliates, filed the complaint, which was lost at the district court level. Petitioner/appellants appealed and the Ninth Circuit en banc ruled in petitioners favor striking down both the out-of-precinct policy and the ballot-collection law. Appellees filed for certiorari, which was granted and consolidated on October 2, 2020. | |
| Filed | 10/02/2020 | |
| State | Arizona | |
| Type of Court | Federal | |
| Circuit | US Supreme Court | |
| Status | Active | |
| Last Updated | 03/13/2021 | |
| Issue Tag(s) | In-Person Voting COVID Concern (Other In-Person Voting Issue) Ballot collection/harvesting; limiting in person voting by precinct |
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| Dispositive Ruling(s) | 04/30/2020: Other | |
