Source: http://www.mjyoung.net/weblog/index.php/tag/constitution/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 08:44:11+00:00

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Constitution | mark Joseph "young"
This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #289, on the subject of Stifling Lozman’s Protected Speech.
From one perspective, the most interesting thing about Fane Lozman’s recent victory at the United States Supreme Court is that it is the second time this ordinary citizen has taken a case to that court, and the second time he has won. It really does happen in these United States, although in fairness he solicited aid from a law school and a group of pro bono attorneys.
The reason it is of interest to us is that this second win is an Amendment I Freedom of Expression case, a subject we follow with some interest.
The previous case is only of passing interest to us, more as background to the second. Lozman built a floating house, which he had towed to various places until he docked it at a marina in Riviera Beach, in Palm Beach County, Florida. The city wanted to exercise eminent domain over the marina to seize it, tear it down, and put it in the hands of a commercial developer. Lozman objected, and brought a lawsuit against the city for improper procedure when they attempted to pass the measure a day before a Florida state law went into effect making such use of eminent domain illegal. He won that suit. However, while he was involved in this, the city declared that his house was a “vessel” under maritime law, and seized it. Lozman fought this, stating that his house was not a “vessel” under the definitions provided in the law, and therefore not subject to seizure under that law. In Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, Florida, 568 U.S. 115 (2013), the Supreme Court agreed. The house was not designed to be a mode of transportation, and for this and several lesser reasons the court concluded 7 to 2 (Sotameyer and Kennedy dissenting) that maritime jurisdiction was inappropriate, and the city owed Lozman a lot of money to replace his home.
In the midst of these battles, Lozman showed up at a City Council meeting, and during the public comments time stepped forward and began calmly talking about political corruption. It is said that he spoke for about fifteen seconds when one of the Councilmen instructed the police officer who was present for the purpose of maintaining order to remove him from the room. He was handcuffed and charged, but the charges were dropped. However, he filed suit claiming that his Amendment I right to free speech was violated.
In Fane Lozman, Petitioner v. City of Riviera Beach Florida, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), the Supreme court in an 8 to 1 decision said that it was–but noted that there were special circumstances that made it so.
At the head of those special circumstances, Lozman had presented evidence to the effect that the City Council had previously adopted an official policy of intimidation against him and others who had spoken out against them, and asserted that his arrest was executing that policy. The evidence included a transcript of a closed Council meeting in which Councilmember Elizabeth Wade suggested that the city use its resources to “intimidate” Lozman and others who had filed lawsuits against the city. At a later point in the meeting, one of the other councilmembers asked whether there was “a consensus of what Ms. Wade is saying,” and this was affirmed by others present. Lozman asserts that these remarks formed an official plan to intimidate him.
The lower courts held that because there was probable cause to arrest Lozman at the meeting (on the very minor charge that he did not stop speaking when asked to do so, and thus was considered disruptive to the meeting) he could not claim the arrest was retaliatory. However, the Supreme Court decided that if a jury might believe that the closed door meeting comments created an official policy of retaliation, and if the arrest at the later meeting was an implementation of that policy, Lozman would prevail.
It does not mean that all cases in which people are arrested for trying to speak at public meetings and so disrupting the meeting involve violations of Amendment I free speech rights, but only those in which there is evidence that the arrest is part of a government policy of intimidation against the person arrested.
Justice Thomas dissents, stating that the rule propounded by the majority is too convoluted and might never apply in any case including the present one, and that the previous rule in essence said that if probable cause was present no case for retaliatory arrest could stand, even if it involved freedom of speech.
Justice Thomas is right: it is a bad decision. It allows governments to harrass citizens exercizing their freedom of speech at meetings as long as there isn’t a paper trail suggesting that they agreed to do this. Lozman probably wins (and I think that when Justice Kennedy writes that a reasonable juror would have to be able to believe that the statements at the closed meeting created a policy and that the action at the open meeting implemented it he believes that they would) because the idea of intimidating him was discussed on the record at a meeting. If the Committeemembers had discussed this at a coffeeshop or cocktail party and agreed informally to do this, he would have no case–but his rights would have been just as impinged.
Meanwhile, the dissent’s probable cause test is worse. I once was discussing a law that deprived anyone who had been convicted of a felony of certain rights, and commented that felonies were generally rather serious crimes. I was informed that legislatures had taken to defining more and more crimes of lesser and lesser severity as “felonies” in order to enforce stricter penalties against them. In the present case, it seems initially Lozman did not believe there was probable cause for an arrest, and there was some doubt as to whether there was probable cause for the charges initially brought. He was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest without violence–the former because he stepped up to the podium to raise issues at a public meeting, the latter because he refused to relinquish the podium when asked. The District Court found that as a matter of law there was insufficient evidence to support probable cause for either of those charges. However, the city dug up another statute prohibiting interruptions or disturbances in schools, churches, or other public assemblies–a charge never mentioned prior to the trial–and maintained that there was probable cause to arrest Lozman on that charge; Lozman conceded that there was probable cause for that. That, though, shows that if the authorities want to arrest someone, they can probably find probable cause to do so if they look hard enough.
What was needed was a looser rule, one that permitted evidence of a pattern of intimidation to stand as proof of an intention of intimidation. Lozman’s case adduced many incidents of arbitrary official actions taken against him; the stifling of his right to speak at the public meeting was the most egregious because it impinged his Amendment I freedom of speech.
The claim that Lozman’s speech was off-topic was insupportable. In the first fifteen seconds he spoke of two government officials in other jurisdictions that were arrested for corruption. That could be the preamble to any of a dozen on-topic speeches. For the committee to have claimed he was speaking about something outside the parameters of the meeting is not defensible.
Congratulations to Lozman for winning twice at the Supreme Court (and winning several lower court cases along the way). However, this decision is going to have to be modified by future ones before it is at all useful in the defense of free speech.
This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #278, on the subject of The 2018 Recap.
A year ago I continued a tradition of recapitulating in the most sketchy of fashions everything I had published over the previous year, in mark Joseph “young” web log post #219: A 2017 Retrospective. I am back to continue that tradition, as briefly as reasonable. Some of that brevity will be achieved by referencing index pages, other collections of links to articles and installments.
For example, on the second of January, the same day I published that retrospective here, I also posted another chapter in the series of Multiverser novels, at which point we were at the twenty-third chapter of the fourth book, Spy Verses (which contains one hundred forty-seven short chapters). We had just published the first of seven behind-the-writings web log posts looking at the writing process, but all of that is indexed at that link. Also on that same day the Christian Gamers Guild released the second installment of the new series Faith in Play, but all of those articles along with all the articles in the RPG-ology series are listed, briefly described, and linked (along with other excellent articles from other members of the guild) in the just-published Thirteen Months in Review on their site. That saves recapping here two dozen more titles in the realms of Bible/theology and gaming, many of them excellent. It should also be mentioned that six days a week I post to the Chaplain’s Bible study list, finishing Revelation probably early next week, and posting “Musings” on Fridays.
Spy Verses wrapped up in October, and was followed by the release of an expansion of Multiverser Novel Support Pages, updated character sheets through the end of that book, and by the end of that month we had begun publishing, several chapters per week, Garden of Versers, which is still going as I write this.
Now would probably be a good time to mention that all of that writing is free to read, supported by reader contributions–that means you–through Patreon or PayPal Me. If you’ve been following and enjoying any of those series, your encouragement and support through those means goes a long way to keeping them going, along with much else that has been written–and although that may be the bulk of what was written, there is still much else.
Since on January 10th the first of the year’s web log posts on law and politics appeared, we’ll cover those next.
#220: The Right to Repair presents the new New Jersey law requiring manufacturers of consumer electronics to provide schematics, parts, and tools to owners at reasonable prices, so that those with some knowledge in the field can troubleshoot and repair their own cell phones and other electronics, and none of us need be at the mercy of price-gouging company stores.
#221: Silence on the Lesbian Front addressed the ramifications of a Supreme Court decision not to hear a case against a Mississippi law permitting merchants to decline wedding services to homosexual weddings.
#222: The Range War Explodes: Interstate Water Rights arose at the Supreme Court level when Florida claimed Georgia was using too much of the water that should flow downstream to it.
#225: Give Me Your Poor talks about our immigrant history, the illusion that it was entirely altruistic, and the question of what we do going forward.
#229: A Challenge to Winner-Take-All in the Electoral College looks at a federal lawsuit claiming that the standard electoral college election system violates the one-person-one-vote rule.
#230: No Womb No Say? challenges the notion that men should not have a say in abortion law.
#231: Benefits of Free-Range Parenting discusses the recent idea that parents who do not closely monitor their kids are not being negligent.
#241: Deportation of Dangerous Felons considers the Supreme Court case which decided that the law permitting deportation of immigrants for “aggravated felonies” is too vague.
#247: The Homosexual Wedding Cake Case examines in some detail the decision that protected a baker from legal action against him for refusing service to a homosexual couple, based primarily on the prejudicial language of the lower court decision.
#251: Voter Unregistration Law examined a somewhat complicated case upholding a law that permits removal of non-responsive voters from the registration lists.
#253: Political Messages at Polling Places presented the decision that non-specific political clothing and such cannot be banned from polling places.
#255: On Sveen: Divorcees, Check Your Beneficiaries examined a convoluted probate case in which a law passed subsequent to a divorce dictated how life insurance policy assets should be distributed.
#259: Saying No to Public Employee Union Agency Fees is the case the unions feared, in which they were stripped of their ability to charge non-members fees for representation.
#261: A Small Victory for Pro-Life Advocates hinged on free speech and a California law compelling crisis pregnancy centers to post notices that the state provides free and low-cost abortions.
#270: New Jersey’s 2018 Election Ballot was the first of two parts on the election in our state, #271: New Jersey’s 2018 Election Results providing the second part.
#274: Close Races and Third Parties arose in part from the fact that one of our congressional districts was undecided for several days, and in part from the fact that Maine has enacted a new experimental system which benefits third parties by having voters rank all candidates in order of preference.
One post that not only bridges the space between religion and politics but explains why the two cannot really be separated should be mentioned, #224: Religious Politics.
My practice of late has been to put my book reviews on Goodreads, and you’ll find quite a few there, but for several reasons I included #223: In re: Full Moon Rising, by T. M. Becker as a web log post. I also copied information from a series of Facebook posts about books I recommended into #263: The Ten Book Cover Challenge.
There were a few entries in time travel, mostly posted to the Temporal Anomalies section of the site, including Temporal Anomalies in Synchronicity, which is pretty good once you understand what it really is; Temporal Anomalies in Paradox, which is a remarkably convoluted action-packed time travel story; Temporal Anomalies in O Homen Do Futuro a.k.a. The Man From the Future, a wonderfully clever Brazilian film in which the time traveler has to fix what he tried to fix, interacting with himself in the past; and Temporal Anomalies in Abby Sen, an Indian film that is ultimately pretty dull but not without some interesting ideas.
In the miscellaneous realm, we had #227: Toward Better Subtitles suggesting how to improve the closed captioning on television shows; #228: Applying the Rules of Grammar encourages writers to understand the rules and the reasons for them before breaking them; and #273: Maintaining Fictional Character Records gives some details of my way of keeping character information consistent from book to book.
#264: How About Danny Taylor?
#276: Best Guitarist Phil Keaggy.
Looking at our Bible and Theology posts, the first of the year landed in the end of March, as #233: Does Hell Exist? attempts to explore how the modern conception of hell compares with the Biblical one; #245: Unspoken Prayer Requests finds theological problems with asking people to pray without telling them what to pray; and #267: A Mass Revival Meeting explains what is really necessary to bring about a revival.
There were also a couple of entries related to gaming, including the republication of a lost article as #237: Morality and Consequences: Overlooked Roleplay Essentials–the first article I ever wrote to be published on someone else’s web site. There was also a response to some comments made by #239: A Departing Member of the Christian Gamers Guild, and a sort of review of a convention appearance, #249: A 2018 AnimeNEXT Adventure.
A couple previously published pieces appeared in translation in the French edition of Places to Go, People to Be, which you can find indexed under my name there.
So that is a look at what was published online under my name this past year–a couple hundred articles, when you count all the chapters of the books (and more if you count all the Bible study posts). In the future, well, I have a lot more to write about Christian music, I’m only getting started with Garden of Versers and have another novel, Versers Versus Versers, set up and ready to run, several Faith in Play and RPG-ology articles are in the queue (one publishes today), and there’s a study of the Gospel According to John ready to post and the Gospel According to Mark being prepared to follow it, plus some preliminary notes on Supreme Court cases, an analysis of a time travel movie that’s taking too long to finish, and more.
Again, your support through Patreon or PayPal.me helps make all of it possible. Thank you for your support and encouragement.
This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #261, on the subject of A Small Victory for Pro-Life Advocates.
The United States Supreme Court has ruled in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra 585 U. S. ____ (2018), in favor of pro-life Crisis Pregnancy Centers who, under the California Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency Act (FACT Act), were required to communicate to their clients that the State of California was ready to assist them in obtaining abortions.
It should be understood up front that the Court did not actually rule that the FACT Act was unconstitutional. That was technically not what was on appeal. The National Institute for Family and Life Advocates, NIFLA, had raised a challenge to the law and requested an injunction preventing its enforcement while the case was being heard. The lower courts ruled that NIFLA probably could not win and so was not entitled to an injunction; the Supreme Court granted the injunction, stating that NIFLA probably could win on the merits and so enforcement should be stayed until the case had been heard.
Justice Thomas wrote the opinion of the court, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Alito, and Gorsuch. He observed that the law appeared to be targeted specifically at clinics and similar services which focused on alternatives to abortion and attempted to encourage women to give birth to their babies, often providing prenatal and post-natal care for such mothers. Clinics run by licensed professionals or run under a state license were required to deliver a notice consisting, in English, of forty-two words (one hyphenated) plus a phone number (top notice in the picture), informing clients that the State of California was ready to help them kill their unborn babies if they so wished. This notice had to be prominently posted in large letters within the facility, included as a full-sized document with any papers given to clients, and included in any advertising. Further, this notice had to be delivered in every language recognized by the local county as a major spoken language within the county–at least English and Spanish, and in Los Angeles County thirteen distinct languages.
Thomas observed that this was requiring an organization whose very purpose was to reduce the number of abortions to communicate the reverse message, that abortions were readily available elsewhere. He further observed that this was a controversial message, and that the weight of the requirement was excessive–if such a licensed organization decided to post a billboard in Los Angeles County that said “Choose Life” with a phone number, that billboard would also have to have that forty-two word notice in thirteen languages in the same sized print as the core message, overwhelming the intended message with what amounts to paid advertising for their competition.
It would be something like requiring all politicians of any party to include in their paid advertising equal space promoting each other candidate in the same race.
Facilities serving the same purpose that were not licensed or run by licensed personnel were required similarly to post a shorter notice, again in all the same ways and places, stating that California has not licensed them as medical care providers. Again, it was to be posted prominently, included in all advertising, and given to clients in printed form. Further, the legislation was worded such that the requirement would only apply to pro-life organizations.
[I]t is not forward thinking to force individuals to “be an instrument for fostering public adherence to an ideological point of view [they] fin[d] unacceptable.” Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705, 715 (1977).
That amounts to religious/political discrimination, and again a violation of the First Amendment.
Writing the dissent, and joined by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, Justice Breyer makes several significant points.
The fact is we regularly require organizations to post informational signs at least obliquely relevant to their purpose. One example leaps to mind. A few years back New Jersey had a problem, that several newborn babies were rescued from public trash cans because young parents did want them and could not care for them. Today, all emergency rooms and many other care clinics have signs on the walls informing anyone who enters the building that there are safe drop points where you can abandon a child no questions asked. Obviously that notice is irrelevant to the majority of clients in those facilities; just as obviously such locations are good choices for reaching persons who need that information. We might debate whether such a program fosters teen-aged irresponsibility (a mother who would never dream of putting her baby in a trash bin might abandon it at a safe drop point if made aware of such, and so free herself of the task of caring for the child), but creating and promoting the option saves lives. Other notifications are posted; the lawfully-required notices on tobacco products and in tobacco ads are clearly counter to the interests of tobacco companies.
However, Breyer attempts to sweep away the aspect that these laws were carefully tailored to target pro-life organizations. He tells us that organizations that are not pro-life don’t need to be required to tell women about the availability of abortions, as they are probably already doing so. That’s hardly a sufficient basis for a distinction regarding compelled speech.
For the moment, all that NIFLA has won is a delay, that the law cannot be enforced until the case has been heard. However, the majority opinion and the significant concurrence are filled with good reasons for the law to be overturned, and as the case returns to the lower courts NIFLA has a good chance winning, probably without another Supreme Court intervention.
This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #259, on the subject of Saying No to Public Employee Union Agency Fees.
Four decades ago the Supreme Court handed down a decision in a case entitled Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U. S. 209 (1977). In it the Court ruled that it was not a violation of constitutional rights for unions representing public employees to charge what was called an “agency fee” to all public employees who were not members of the authorized public employees’ union. Since the law required that the union represent such non-members equally with members (that is, same pay, benefits, and protections), the rule was intended to prevent “free riders” who got the benefits of union representation, union pay and benefits, without paying for it.
This year, in Mark Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, et al., 585 U. S. ____ (2018) they announced that they were wrong, and overturned the precedent.
This is not entirely unknown, but it is rare. The Court has a rule it calls a doctrine and names stare decisis, which in essence means the decision stands. It happens sometimes, but usually the Court puts a lot of work into making it possible for any previous decision to still be enforceable in narrower circumstances and new rules to apply to most cases. That did not happen this time. Janus overturned Aboud. According to the Court, requiring persons who do not agree with union policies to pay to support the union is a First Amendment violation, because it compels such persons to support speech with which they disagree.
To begin to understand this, we need to recall that money is fungible–something we discussed in our second web log entry nearly five years ago, and which the majority opinion mentions. To recall the example, if I have a dollar and I’m going to go to the corner store to buy candy and comic books, it’s likely that I’ll wind up with fifty cents’ worth of each. If, though, my mother gives me another dollar, and tells me that I am not to spend any of the money she gives me on candy, I will spend her dollar on comic books and my dollar on candy, and now I have twice as much candy because she paid for the comic books enabling me to rebudget my own funds to cover more candy. In much the same way, the money given by non-members to cover the “costs of negotiating”, even if our bookkeeper tells us that all of it went to that purpose, probably frees funds to go for other purposes we might not approve.
Abood was not so naive as that. It required unions to do an accounting, separating “chargeable” from “non-chargeable” costs, and bill non-members only for their share of the “chargeable” costs. Political spending was to be “non-chargeable” and anything that was part of enabling the union to negotiate was “chargeable”. In practice, however, “non-chargeable” had come to mean contributions to political candidates, and anything else was lumped into “chargeable”. In the present case, the union billed non-members for costs ranging from lobbying for legislation to paying for the member convention (which presumably non-members did not attend). Non-members were entitled to sue if they believed something non-chargeable had been included, but the summaries provided by the unions were so lacking in detail that it would require thousands of dollars in attorney and accountant fees just to determine what was and was not charged.
More fundamentally, though, Janus argued that the very act of negotiating with the government for pay and benefits is itself a fundamentally political action and thus a form of political speech. Janus says that he is not of the opinion that the State of Illinois where he works should raise salaries for unionized public employees; the state has the lowest credit rating of any state in history because of its overspending and indebtedness. Janus opposes the union’s argument that the state needs to raise taxes to increase salaries and benefits for state workers. He thus highlights the fact that asking for money from the state is fundamentally political speech, and being required to subsidize the bargaining process makes him party to that speech against his will.
For what it’s worth, almost immediately upon the release of the opinion, many liberal lobbying groups sent emergency funding requests to supporters, claiming that they will have to make up for the shortfall they expect to incur since public sector unions will have less money to give them–this according to the New York Times (as cited by Investors.com). It is of course possible that these groups are lying to their supporters, that in fact the unions have not been misusing non-member money to support political causes and there will be no reduction in such support, but the fear of it makes a good campaign motivator to bring in more. Preferring to think better of them, we are forced to face the possibility that indeed the union has been using non-member agency fee money to support political causes and lying about it in their accounting (or perhaps believing that they have very little chance of being taken to court over it and at least a fair chance of winning the case if they are). So one way or another, the liberals appear in a bad light: either they have been lying about the inappropriate use of non-member money to support political objectives, or they are lying now about anticipating a reduction in the money available for such objectives.
Or perhaps they’re expecting to lose revenue due to a mass exodus of union members. Why, though, would that be? If people believe in the union, would they not want to support the union and be part of the union process? Or is it the case that vast numbers of public employee union members feel coerced into membership because it has cost nearly as much not to belong as it did to belong?
Or maybe they’re just confused.
It has also been reported that a Democratic New York State Senator is proposing legislation to end-run this by permitting the public employee unions to include in negotiations payment from the state to cover the costs of representing non-members. Seriously, if it is an impingement on free speech to require non-member public employees to pay costs of the union which benefits them in negotiations, it must be far more so to require it of taxpayers whose only connection to this is that they have to pay the amount given to the union. They seem confused to me.
Justice Kagan’s dissent culminates in an insistence that Abood should stand primarily because of stare decisis, and because of the extensive reliance on the decision. She notes that at least twenty-two states are going to have to legislate new laws regarding their public service unions, and thousands of contracts relying on agency fees will have to be renegotiated.
Before she reaches that point, she in essence reargues Abood, asserting that it is good law well founded and that the majority overturned it merely because the majority didn’t like it.
The fundamental point of Abood was always that it is to the benefit of the government’s ability to manage its employees to have them represented by exclusive negotiators, unions, which are well-funded and independent of government. Agency fees were considered a reasonable way to achieve that. She further argues that (application aside) the Abood distinction between political spending and costs of bargaining and contract management is a clear one. She objects outright to the notion that the question of whether governments should give their public employees more in salary and benefits is a political one within the context of the employer-employee relationship, because it is essential to that relationship. She further forecasts a gloomy future in which the number of “free riders” increases as union members recognize how much they can save by leaving the union coupled with the fact that the union must continue to represent them equally whether they are members or not.
Wait a minute. Did I already say that?
It is not at all clear that unions will be unable to function without the agency fee support. It is certainly the case that unions have abused the “chargeable/non-chargeable” distinction of Abood (is it really credible that three quarters of the cost of union membership goes exclusively to union contract negotiation and administration costs?). It is also the case that public sector unions appear to operate successfully in states which do not permit agency fees.
I am not persuaded that this will cause all the chaos predicted. It does not change the exclusive negotiator rule, that is, if you are not a union member but are in a public employee union shop the union is still your exclusive representative for negotiations. Nor will it completely eliminate union membership, since one must be a union member to have any impact on policy. It will weaken unions some; they will have less money to spend on their political pursuits. However, there is a serious issue concerning whether public employee unions ought to be involved in political pursuits at all, and if we believe that the unions as a whole have a right to speak on issues of public concern, we must also believe that public employees individually have the right not to support those entities with which they disagree.
This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #229, on the subject of A Challenge to Winner-Take-All in the Electoral College.
Now an organization called Equal Citizens has decided that there might be another way to eliminate the winner-take-all system and replace it with proportional representation: have the winner-take-all system declared unconstitutional. To this end, they have filed lawsuits against the practice in California, Massachusetts, Texas, and South Carolina.
That might seem like overkill. After all, wouldn’t one successful lawsuit fix the problem? However, it probably wouldn’t.
Suppose they filed in Texas and won in Texas. There are four Federal District Courts in Texas, any one of which would do, and victory would mean it was illegal to assign all thirty-eight of that State’s electors to the candidate winning the majority vote–in Texas. At that point they have to hope that the State appeals the decision to the Fifth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, and that they win there. If they do, it will be illegal not only in Texas but also in Louisiana and Mississippi. However, it will still be legal in the rest of the country.
In order for it to become unconstitutional nationwide, the Supreme Court of the United States would have to decide the case. That means getting the Court to hear the case, and as we know the Court is rarely forced to hear any case and might prefer to stay out of this one. The best shot at getting Certiorari at the Supreme Court for a case like this is to get decisions in more than one Circuit which hold opposing positions. That is, they need one court to say it is constitutional and another to say it’s unconstitutional, so that the Supreme Court will see that it is necessary for it to resolve the matter for everyone. That means in filing four lawsuits they are hoping to win at least one and lose at least one, at the appellate level.
In theory, they could win an effective victory if they won all four suits, as States might see that as an indication that other circuits would agree and avoid a lawsuit by complying with the change. However, compliance would only be mandated in those circuits where the decisions were made, and additional lawsuits might be needed to change some recalcitrant States.
So how can a practice that is so nearly universal (only Maine and Nebraska do not follow it, and they both use district voting, that is, the state is divided into sections each of which picks a representative elector) be unconstitutional?
The argument is based on the XIVth Amendment, and specifically the Equal Protection Clause, which states that every citizen of legal age is to be treated equally by the States in all matters of law and politics. That means, according to the Amendment, one person, one vote. The claim is made that in a winner-take-all system, if fifty thousand voters pick one candidate but fifty thousand one voters pick the other, fifty thousand voters are disenfranchised when the entire electoral vote goes to the other candidate. In order for their votes to be protected, the electoral vote should be divided based on the proportion of voters supporting each candidate–in this case, equally, or slightly in favor of the majority candidate.
So is it a good argument?
The XIVth amendment is one of the Reconstruction amendments following the Civil War. The “Original Intent” of its reference to one person, one vote was to prevent discrimination against black men specifically; it was amending the section of the Constitution that counted slaves as partial persons by giving the emancipated slaves voting power equal to their white counterparts. In that sense, it has nothing to do with the method of selecting Electors for the College. However, as often happens, what the Framers of the Amendment wrote has been applied beyond what they intended. This clause is the basis for all those lawsuits over reapportionment: the claim that one party has by drawing the district lines given itself an unfair advantage by disenfranchising voters in certain geographic areas. The connection is obvious: if white government officials can set up districts such that blacks are always in the minority in every district (that is, by identifying black neighborhoods and apportioning them into several predominantly white surrounding neighborhoods) they can smother the voice of black voters. Thus “gerrymandering” to oppress racial voting blocks is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
Yet the Equal Protection Clause would itself be inequitable if it only protected blacks or other racial minorities. If it is a constitutional violation to stifle the representation of any one voter, it is equally a violation to stifle the representation of any other voter. Arguably winner-take-all voting does exactly that, and on that basis could be ruled unconstitutional.
On the other hand, as we have noted in previous articles, the Framers of the Constitution did not intend for Presidents to be chosen by democratic process. Quite the contrary, they expected that the Electoral College would always be hopelessly deadlocked and so serve effectively as a nominating committee offering a slate of candidates from which the legislature would select the one they believed would best serve them. As we noted in #172: Why Not Democracy?, that has happened exactly once. However, the process was intended to empower the States as States, not so much the individual voters save as they are citizens of their respective States. If we look at the Original Intent of the Constitution, it is evident that Electors are to be chosen by the States, by methods determined individually by each State.
Of course, the XIVth Amendment changed that at least in part. The question is, in doing so did it mean that a State’s Electors had to be representative of all the voters proportionately, or is it sufficient for a State’s Electors to represent the majority of the State’s voters? Are Presidents to be selected by the people, or by the States?
If winner-take-all Elector voting is deemed unconstitutional on that basis, it probably means that district apportionment is similarly unconstitutional, and electoral votes would have to be assigned based entirely on the proportion of the total vote in the state. Israel uses such a system to elect its Parliament, and it is not an unworkable system. If implemented, it would move us slightly closer to a President elected by the majority.
It is certainly worth considering.
As a footnote, in researching this article I stumbled upon this interesting toy which permits the user to experiment with various methods of choosing Electors and see their impact on the most recent two Presidential elections. What intrigued me was that of eight possible methods (including the current one), Trump won the Electoral College in all but that one specifically rigged to give the Democrats the most electoral votes (that is, by using winner-take-all in states they nominally won and proportional in states they nominally lost). That caused me to wonder how that could be if, as is often claimed, Clinton took the majority of the popular vote. The answer seems to be in part that despite the fact that Trump took more votes in California than in any other state but two, Clinton took enough votes in that state to tip the balance of the popular vote, but not of the Electoral vote, because California is underrepresented in the Electoral College (because it is underrepresented in the House of Representatives). That in turn reminded me that in the aforementioned web log post I commented that we did not want California to be the big bully that dictates the law to the rest of us. The other part of the answer is simply that Trump took more states, and because of the “plus two” Electors each state gets, the geography worked for him: the fact that Presidents are on some level chosen by the States, not the people, meant that having more states choose Trump gives him more Electors.

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