Great news for voters today in Wisconsin, via Project Vote…
Circuit Judge David Flanagan called the voter ID measure “the single most restrictive voter eligibility law” in the nation, according to the Associated Press.
“The NAACP’s Milwaukee branch and immigration rights group Voces de la Frontera sued over the law last year. A trial on whether to grant a permanent injunction is scheduled for April 16,” AP reports.
The groups asserted that more than 220,000 eligible voters would be unable to prove identity to vote under the new law.
“The scope of the impairment has been shown to be serious, extremely broad and largely needless,” Flanagan wrote in his court order. “There is no doubt that the plaintiffs have shown a very substantial likelihood of success on the merits.”
The state is expected to appeal the decision.
“It’s a solid victory for voting rights and all voters in the state of Wisconsin,” said Richard Saks, attorney for the NAACP. “It’s a win for the hundreds of thousands who have difficulty or find it impossible to get voter ID under Act. 23,” Saks said.
In granting the temporary injunction, Flanagan’s 11-page order [PDF] “concludes that the plaintiffs have demonstrated the probability of success as well as the likelihood of irreperable harm,” in their original complaint which is set for trial beginning next month. The case, Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP v. Scott Walker, is based solely on the argument that Act 23 is in violation of the WI state constitution. Flanagan’s ruling is grounded in a fundamentally conservative interpretation of the state constitution’s guaranteed right to vote, and on historic precendents where the state Supreme Court has decided in favor of that right over legislative laws affecting that right to the disadvantage of the voter.
Today’s ruling is the first judicial blow against the vote suppressing law passed by Republicans in the wake of their 2010 electoral victory in the Badger State. There are now at least four different legal complaints filed against Wisconsin’s Act 23 challenging both the state and federal Constitutionality of the law. The most recent suit was filed late last month, and detailed by our own Ernest Canning who also calls for the U.S. Dept. of Justice to intervene in the case in order to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Wisconsin, on the basis of racial discrimination.
Late last year the ACLU filed a 54-page federal class action complaint on behalf of some 17 named plaintiffs, including elderly, student, minority and even veteran voters, all of whom may otherwise be unable to cast their once-legal vote under the state’s new law passed by its GOP legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2011.
The lead plaintiff in that case, 86-year old Ruthelle Frank, is disabled and was born at home. She never had a birth certificate. Though she’s been legally voting in every election since 1948 and is an elected member of the Brokaw Village Board, she may have to pay more than $200 in order to have a birth certificate created and typos in her name, as recorded by the state registrar, corrected before she can receive the “free” state-issued Photo ID that would allow her to vote under the new law.
Even younger, more able-bodied voters have had problems jumping through some of the hoops required to obtain a so-called “free” ID in Wisconsin, as documented on video tape last summer by a woman attempting to help her son obtain one from the state DMV.
In a small primary in the state late last month, the first full implementation of the statute, a number of voters were reportedly denied their right to vote — at polling places where they had legally voted for years prior — after they were unable to present Photo ID which met the state’s new draconian restrictions. For now, at least for the upcoming April primary in Wisconsin, those restrictions will mercifully be on hold.
UPDATE: Flanagan’s ruling was extremely powerful and likely very difficult to rebut, short of an out-and-out activist ruling by the Right-leaning state Supreme Court. (They’ve done it before, so I wouldn’t put it past them.) I’ve posted a few additional snippets from Flanagan’s must-read decision in comments below. Our legal analyst Ernest Canning, who has been closely covering the WI challenges to Act 23, has also now rung in with a few more thoughts on Flanagan’s decision there as well.
As I previously noted in covering the separate legal action challenging WI Photo ID by the League of Women Voters, the fact that the WI Constitution treats the right to vote as fundamental means that statutes which infringe that right are subject to strict or heightened scrutiny.
That is precisely what Judge Flannagan did here. He distinguished the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Crawford precisely because the Court in Crawford did not treat the right as fundamental under the U.S. Constitution, adding that the Indiana statute was more flexible and offered opportunities for voters to obtain photo ID that are not present in WI and because, in Judge Flannagan’s view, Crawford was based on a “flawed factual record”.
In the process of issuing the injunction, Judge Flannagan made several significant factual findings. He found that there was “no evidence of voter fraud that would have been prevented by” the photo ID law.
He found that the statute imposed a significant burden on constitutionally qualified voters and that there was a disparate impact upon the elderly, the indigent and minorities. Additionally, even though she was not a party to this action, Ruthelle Frank’s disenfranchisement was specifically mentioned in the decision.
As I noted in my previous League of Women Voters article, my concern was never how a fair-minded judge would handle the solid legal challenges directed at Act 23 under the WI Constitution, but what will ultimately become of such a challenge if and when it reaches the extraordinarily partisan majority on the WI Supreme Court.
I wanted to post these following snippets from Flanagan’s ruling today, but don’t have time tonight to retype or excerpt them. While preparing them, it looks like Ernie jumped in with his own thoughts. These snippets happen to underscore some of the points made by Ernie above…
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Brad, I got this photo with you in mind. If you like you have all permissions to copy it wherever you think it is display-worthy.
I’d put it in some comment if I knew how to (or this editor allowed) put an image link in here. Alas, as close as I can get is photobucket, and direct you there to Administrater it over here.
http://s1237.photobucket.com/al...0109121234.jpg
The only other image in my p-bucket ‘album’ is an Occupy logo which I created, and which I give you right to use wherever, if you like.
I don’t know if the public ‘you’ gets to even see in my ‘album’ and the images there, and I don’t know whether or not you can get a copy out of whatever your see there. I expect you can see it and you can download a copy, and I hope so.
After you have gotten the link I put in this comment, you likely might delete this comment. It’s only here to ‘message’ you. Thanks Brad.
What the heck, another ‘message’ not a comment on-topic.
The photobucket link to said ‘Occupy logo.’ Please, steal and copy this image for The Brand ‘Occupy’
http://s1237.photobucket.com/al...&newest=1
And next, (lastly), the link to see the satellite view looking down on the blue USPS mailbox beside the south frontage entry door into the country store. The mailbox pictured in the p-bucket link of my previous Comment #3:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=...;t=h&z=20
G’night, West Coast.
Now all the wizard will be able to go behind the curtain with smoke and mirrors to play with the electronic voting machine levers, or to write up a paper grail.
Whether that will result in what the wizard though it would or not is not in this debate.
Joe The Plumber won, Dennis Kuchinich lost. Gerrymandering hath consequences.
Agnotology baby! Something the courts cannot change.
Something tells me that United States Supreme Court Justice William Scalia isn’t going to agree with Judge Flanagan’s interpretation of the laws concerning voting rights. However, I think he will wholeheartedly endorse anti-slavery laws.
Moderate Mom @7 wrote:
Neither Scalia nor any other Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court can have any say in the matter. This case was decided strictly on the basis of Wisconsin law, not U.S. law.
The real problem is the majority of right-wing jurists on the WI Supreme Court.
One exception, Ernie, which you know but didn’t say. If the state constitution is found to violate the federal constitution, then the federal courts can step in. Thus, for example, a state constitution could not be amended to institute racial discrimination and be safe from federal challenge. In this case, however, it appears that the state constitution is, at least potentially, more protective of civil rights than the federal constitution is, so I see no opening for a federal court to say anything.