Opinion ID: 4525690
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Eligibility Criteria

Text: Both Daunt and MRP challenge the constitutionality of the Amendment’s eligibility criteria as violative of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Both the question of the criteria’s constitutionality and the analytical framework through which to answer this question are matters of first impression not only in this circuit but in the federal courts generally. For the reasons explained below, we believe that the eligibility criteria are constitutional under either the Anderson-Burdick test or the unconstitutional-conditions doctrine.3 Because the plaintiffsappellants’ challenge to the eligibility criteria is unlikely to succeed under either framework, however, “we need not choose between the two,” Citizens for Legislative Choice v. Miller, 144 F.3d 916, 920 (6th Cir. 1998), and will instead discuss each one below.
In Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780 (1983), and Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428 (1992), the Supreme Court articulated a “flexible standard,” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434, for a court to evaluate “[c]onstitutional challenges to specific provisions of a State’s election laws,” Anderson, 460 U.S. at 789. The Anderson-Burdick test may apply to First Amendment claims as well as to Equal Protection claims. See Obama for Am. v. Husted, 697 F.3d 423, 430 (6th Cir. 2012). Although most—if not all—of the cases considered by the Supreme Court and this court under the Anderson-Burdick test have involved laws that regulate the actual administration of elections, the rationales for applying the Anderson-Burdick test—ensuring that “the democratic processes” are “fair and honest,” Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730 (1974), and “maintain[ing] 3 The defendants-appellees also raise the possibility of the court applying the “deferential approach” that we discussed in Citizens for Legislative Choice v. Miller, 144 F.3d 916 (6th Cir. 1998). Unlike the well-established analytical frameworks we discuss herein, this approach has not been further developed by this court, so we do not consider it here. Nos. 19-2377/2420 Daunt et al. v. Benson et al. Page 10 the integrity of the democratic system,” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 441—resonate here, too. At bottom, the Anderson-Burdick framework is used for evaluating “state election law[s],” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434, and a law restricting membership of the body that draws electoral lines could conceivably be classified as an “election law.” The Amendment is designed to further the exact goals described above: It requires commissioners to “perform their duties in a manner that is impartial and reinforces public confidence in the integrity of the redistricting process.” MICH. CONST., art. IV, § 6(10). For these reasons, we proceed to apply the Anderson-Burdick balancing test. In Anderson, the Supreme Court first articulated this test as follows: [A court] must first consider the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate. It then must identify and evaluate the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule. In passing judgment, the Court must not only determine the legitimacy and strength of each of those interests, it also must consider the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff's rights. 460 U.S. at 789. The level of scrutiny under this test “depends upon the extent to which a challenged regulation burdens First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434. In particular, when those rights are subjected to “severe” restrictions, the regulation must be “narrowly drawn to advance a state interest of compelling importance.” But when a state election law provision imposes only “reasonable, nondiscriminatory restrictions” upon the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of voters, “the State’s important regulatory interests are generally sufficient to justify” the restrictions. Id. (citations omitted). “Regulations falling somewhere in between—i.e., regulations that impose a more-than-minimal but less-than-severe burden—require a ‘flexible’ analysis, ‘weighing the burden on the plaintiffs against the state’s asserted interest and chosen means of pursuing it.’” Ohio Democratic Party v. Husted, 834 F.3d 620, 627 (6th Cir. 2016) (quoting Green Party of Tennessee v. Hargett, 767 F.3d 533, 546 (6th Cir. 2014)). As we explained in Miller, determining whether the burden is severe or incidental requires examining “content-neutrality and alternate means of access.” 144 F.3d at 921. A law would not be content-neutral, and would Nos. 19-2377/2420 Daunt et al. v. Benson et al. Page 11 thus impose a severe burden, if it “limit[ed] political participation by an identifiable political group whose members share a particular viewpoint, associational preference, or economic status.” Id. (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 793). And a law would impose a severe burden if it left “few alternate means of access to the ballot,” “restrict[ing] ‘the availability of political opportunity.’” Id. (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 793). On the question of content-neutrality, we concluded in Miller that a lifetime-term-limit law did not impose a severe burden because it burdens no voters based on “the content of protected expression, party affiliation, or inherently arbitrary factors such as race, religion, or gender.” It burdens no voters based on their views on any of the substantive “issues of the day,” such as taxes or abortion. Apart from the term limits issue, voters who favor experience are not in any sense a recognized “group,” and we are aware of no historical bias against incumbent politicians or their supporters. Id. at 922 (citations omitted). Each of these metrics for assessing content-neutrality yields the same result here. The Amendment’s eligibility criteria do not burden the plaintiffs-appellants based on their status as Republicans, cf. Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347, 355 (1976) (“In order to maintain their jobs, respondents were required to pledge their political allegiance to the Democratic Party, work for the election of other candidates of the Democratic Party, contribute a portion of their wages to the Party, or obtain the sponsorship of a member of the Party . . . .”), or “on their views on any of the substantive ‘issues of the day,’” Miller, 144 F.3d at 922, and neither Daunt nor MRP (with respect to its members) argues that there is a “historical bias” against them in their capacity as individuals with potential conflicts of interest, id. On the question of alternate means of availing oneself of political opportunities, the temporal limitation of the law in this case belies any suggestion that the burden is severe. See Clements v. Fashing, 457 U.S. 957, 967 (1982) (“A ‘waiting period’ is hardly a significant barrier to candidacy.”). Moreover, “[p]laintiffs may run for any [nonpartisan] elected office; they may vote, distribute campaign literature, [and] voice their political opinions . . . .” Grizzle v. Kemp, 634 F.3d 1314, 1324 (11th Cir. 2011). The burden is not severe. On the other end of Anderson-Burdick’s sliding scale, it may appear that the burden imposed by the eligibility criteria is not minimal because the criteria do not constitute a Nos. 19-2377/2420 Daunt et al. v. Benson et al. Page 12 “generally applicable, nondiscriminatory” regulation. Obama for Am., 697 F.3d at 433–34; see Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434. Unlike, for example, “a flat ban on all forms of write-in ballots,” which treats all voters equally, Burdick, 504 U.S. at 438, the Amendment targets specific classes of citizens based on their past political activities. And although there is no “federally protected interest” in holding state office, Moncier v. Haslam, 570 F. App’x 553, 559 (6th Cir. 2014) (collecting cases), several of the eligibility criteria clearly correspond to activities protected by the First Amendment. See, e.g., Elrod, 427 U.S. at 370–71 (explaining that Supreme Court precedent explicitly regarded “political campaigning and management” as “activities . . . protected by the First Amendment”); Autor v. Pritzker, 740 F.3d 176, 182 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (“[R]egistered lobbyists are protected by the First Amendment right to petition.”). Yet the Supreme Court has deemed similar restrictions on political expression to be minimal. See Clements, 457 U.S. at 967 (describing a two-year “waiting period” imposed on current officeholders before they could run for state legislature to be a “de minimis burden”); U.S. Civil Serv. Comm’n v. Nat’l Ass’n of Letter Carriers, AFL-CIO, 413 U.S. 548, 550, 556 (1973) (Hatch Act’s bar on federal employees “tak[ing] an active part in political management or in political campaigns” “did not interfere with a ‘wide range of public activities’”) (quoting United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75, 100 (1947)). Even if the eligibility criteria imposed a moderate burden on activities actually protected by the First Amendment, however, the Amendment would easily satisfy Anderson-Burdick’s middle-ground, “flexible analysis,” under which we “weigh[] the burden on the plaintiffs against the state’s asserted interest and chosen means of pursuing it.” Green Party of Tennessee, 767 F.3d at 546. The burden on the plaintiffs-appellants is relatively insignificant, given (1) their ability to serve on the Commission after their six-year period of ineligibility expires, (2) the lack of any direct prohibition or regulation of pure speech, cf. McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n, 514 U.S. 334, 345 (1995), and (3) the absence of any fundamental right to be a member of the Commission, see Snowden v. Hughes, 321 U.S. 1, 6–7 (1944).4 By contrast, Michigan has a compelling interest “in limiting the conflict of interest implicit in legislative control over 4 Still, one would search in vain for any indication in this opinion that we will relax judicial scrutiny in the area of states structuring their governments “absent the infringement of a dramatic federal interest or a significant violation of constitutional rights.” Concurring Op. at 37. Nos. 19-2377/2420 Daunt et al. v. Benson et al. Page 13 redistricting.” Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Indep. Redistricting Comm’n, 135 S. Ct. 2652, 2676 (2015) (quoting Bruce Cain, Redistricting Commissions: A Better Political Buffer? 121 YALE L. J. 1808, 1808 (2012)) (alteration omitted). Furthermore, “[a]s a sovereign polity, Michigan has a fundamental interest in structuring its government.” Miller, 144 F.3d at 923. The challenged provisions of the Amendment directly advance both of these interests. Accordingly, the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the plaintiffsappellants are unlikely to succeed on their First and Fourteenth Amendment claims against the eligibility criteria under the Anderson-Burdick test.
The other potential framework through which to evaluate the plaintiffs-appellants’ challenge to the eligibility criteria is the unconstitutional-conditions doctrine. Rather than claiming a First Amendment right to sit on the Commission,5 the plaintiffs-appellants claim First Amendment rights to engage in the political activities that make them ineligible for the governmental benefit of membership on the Commission. In Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593 (1972), the Supreme Court held that the government may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected interests—especially, his interest in freedom of speech. For if the government could deny a benefit to a person because of his constitutionally protected speech or associations, his exercise of those freedoms would in effect be penalized and inhibited. This would allow the government to “produce a result which (it) could not command directly.” Such interference with constitutional rights is impermissible. Id. at 597 (quoting Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 526 (1958)). In other words, “[w]hat the First Amendment precludes the government from commanding directly, it also precludes the government from accomplishing indirectly.” Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois, 497 U.S. 62, 77–78 (1990). 5 This distinguishes their case from Nevada Comm’n on Ethics v. Carrigan, 564 U.S. 117 (2011), in which legislators unsuccessfully claimed that conflict-of-interest rules preventing them from voting on legislation violated their alleged First Amendment right to cast such legislative votes. Carrigan’s genealogy of conflict-of-interest rules is instructive, as discussed below, but its rejection of the idea that the First Amendment protects one’s ability to cast a legislative vote is inapposite here. Daunt’s and MRP’s First Amendment claim deals with activities outside of the Commission, not whether they are entitled to sit on the Commission. See Daunt Br. at 28 (acknowledging that “there is no constitutional right to government employment”). Nos. 19-2377/2420 Daunt et al. v. Benson et al. Page 14 As discussed above, supra Part II.B.1, it is clear that at least some of the activities restricted by the eligibility criteria are protected by the First Amendment. In light of the government’s interest in avoiding partisan conflicts of interests and unsavory patronage practices, however, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that these types of restrictions do not run afoul of the First Amendment or the Equal Protection Clause. First, in United Public Workers of America (C.I.O.) v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75 (1947), the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of the following sentence of the Hatch Act: “No officer or employee in the executive branch of the Federal Government . . . shall take any active part in political management or in political campaigns.” Id. at 82. The Court upheld the provision, explaining that Congress and the President are responsible for an efficient public service. If, in their judgment, efficiency may be best obtained by prohibiting active participation by classified employees in politics as party officers or workers, we see no constitutional objection. Id. at 99. Far from a wholesale ban on political expression, the provision “le[ft] untouched full participation by employees in political decisions at the ballot box and forb[ade] only the partisan activity of federal personnel deemed offensive to efficiency.” Id. The Court dismissed the suggestion that no harm could be done by federal employees engaging in these activities in their “free time” outside work hours. Id. at 95. “The influence of political activity by government employees, if evil in its effects on the service, the employees or people dealing with them, is hardly less so because that activity takes place after hours.” Id. The Supreme Court again addressed this provision of the Hatch Act in United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers, 413 U.S. 548 (1973), and reaffirmed Mitchell.6 In Letter Carriers, the Court was unequivocal in approving of Congress’s power to cleanse the civil service of partisan conflicts of interests, stating that if Congress 6 On the same day that it decided Letter Carriers, the Supreme Court upheld an Oklahoma statute that “restrict[ed] the political activities of the State’s classified civil servants in much the same manner that the Hatch Act proscribe[d] partisan political activities of federal employees.” Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 602 (1973). The relevant portions of the Broadrick decision, see id. at 616–18, mirror the Letter Carriers analysis, so we discuss only the latter. Nos. 19-2377/2420 Daunt et al. v. Benson et al. Page 15 forbade activities such as organizing a political party or club; actively participating in fund-raising activities for a partisan candidate or political party; becoming a partisan candidate for, or campaigning for, an elective public office; actively managing the campaign of a partisan candidate for public office; initiating or circulating a partisan nominating petition or soliciting votes for a partisan candidate for public office; or serving as a delegate, alternate or proxy to a political party convention[,] such actions would “unquestionably be valid.” Id. at 556. The Court explained that “the judgment of Congress, the Executive, and the country appears to have been that partisan political activities by federal employees must be limited if the Government is to operate effectively and fairly, elections are to play their proper part in representative government, and employees themselves are to be sufficiently free from improper influences.” Id. at 564. Finally, in Clements v. Fashing, 457 U.S. 957 (1982), the Supreme Court relied on Mitchell and Letter Carriers to uphold two sections of the Texas Constitution, the first of which prohibited certain officials from holding a seat in the state legislature prior to the expiration of their terms of office, and the second of which required an officeholder to resign before running for any other elected office. Whether under the Equal Protection Clause or the First Amendment, the Court held, “the burden on appellees’ First Amendment interests in candidacy are so insignificant that the classifications of § 19 and § 65 may be upheld consistent with traditional equal protection principles.” Id. at 971.7 The Court plurality’s application of rationalbasis review under the Equal Protection Clause “dispose[d] of” the challengers’ First Amendment claim. Id. Mitchell, Letter Carriers, and Clements squarely foreclose the present challenge to the Amendment’s eligibility criteria. Just as the Supreme Court in these cases permitted federal and state governments to restrict the “partisan political activity” of federal employees, Mitchell, 330 U.S. at 100, and state officeholders, Clements, 457 U.S. at 972, we discern no constitutional limitation on Michigan making the forbearance from such activity a condition of sitting on an 7 Even Justice Brennan’s dissenting opinion in Clements, which faulted the plurality for focusing its rational-basis review on whether the “class of candidates or voters that was burdened was somehow suspect” (for example, based on their wealth) instead of focusing on “the impact on the First Amendment rights of candidates and voters,” acknowledged that “some greater deference may be due the State because these restrictions affect only public employees.” 457 U.S. at 977–78 n.2 (Brennan, J., dissenting). Nos. 19-2377/2420 Daunt et al. v. Benson et al. Page 16 independent redistricting commission. MRP’s attempt to distinguish these cases is unpersuasive. It points out that the Amendment, unlike the regulations in the abovementioned cases, does not limit itself to “address[ing] undue influence, or its appearance, on current public employees and officials” due to its retroactive effect. MRP Br. at 15. But Michigan’s interest in addressing the appearance of undue influence—whether or not members of the Commission are “actively partisan,” Mitchell, 330 U.S. at 98—permits it to disqualify not only active partisans but also those whose recent partisan involvement, or whose association with active partisans, could create the appearance that the Commission is staffed by political insiders. See Letter Carriers, 413 U.S. at 565 (“[I]t is not only important that the Government and its employees in fact avoid practicing political justice, but it is also critical that they appear to the public to be avoiding it.”). Efforts to purge conflicts of interest from the democratic process “have been commonplace for over 200 years,” Nevada Comm’n on Ethics v. Carrigan, 564 U.S. 117, 122 (2011), and we are loath to disturb this longstanding practice, particularly when “public confidence in the integrity of the redistricting process” is at stake. MICH. CONST., art. IV, § 6(10); see Rucho v. Common Cause, 139 S. Ct. 2484, 2507 (2019) (noting states’ interests in “restricting partisan considerations in districting” and citing Michigan Commission Amendment as example). Beyond these Supreme Court cases, decisions of our sister circuits demonstrate that even when laws establish eligibility criteria for elected officeholders, thus burdening not only the candidates themselves but voters who may have otherwise sought to elect them, see Bullock v. Carter, 405 U.S. 134, 143 (1972), courts have applied a less-than-exacting standard of review. For instance, in evaluating a statute involving eligibility criteria for elected office, the Eleventh Circuit in Grizzle v. Kemp, 634 F.3d 1314 (11th Cir. 2011), declined to subject the statute to strict scrutiny. In Grizzle, the plaintiffs were disqualified from running for election to Georgia school boards because they had “immediate family member[s]” employed by their districts’ school systems. Id. at 1316. After discussing numerous cases applying rational-basis review to laws establishing eligibility criteria for public office, the Eleventh Circuit followed suit, explaining that “the State may regulate one step at a time in order to address what it deems the most pressing issues.” Id. at 1325. And in Fletcher v. Marino, 882 F.2d 605 (2d Cir. 1989), the Second Circuit applied rational-basis review to a law restricting certain political party officers from being elected to community school boards. Id. at 613; see id. at 612 (“[L]aws that Nos. 19-2377/2420 Daunt et al. v. Benson et al. Page 17 implicate, in a limited fashion, a person’s rights to participate in politics and to serve as an elected official have survived review under the First Amendment and have not been subjected to strict scrutiny.”). The laws at issue in these cases are highly similar to the eligibility criteria at issue here. In fact, the most salient difference—that the laws in these cases involved elected positions, whereas the Amendment does not—makes the argument for applying rational-basis review even stronger here, given that the eligibility criteria do not burden any voter’s access to the ballot. Under rational-basis review, for the reasons discussed supra Part II.B.1, the Amendment is constitutional. Furthermore, we note that the eligibility criteria do not represent some out-of-place addition to an unrelated state program; they are part and parcel of the definition of this Commission, of how it achieves independence from partisan meddling. This is critical to the constitutionality of a challenged program under the unconstitutional-conditions doctrine, as the Supreme Court’s government-funding cases make clear. The Court has explained that although the Spending Clause of the Federal Constitution “includes an ancillary power to ensure that those funds are properly applied to the prescribed use,” Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 195 n.4 (1991), the government may not create as a funding condition “the affirmation of a belief that by its nature cannot be confined within the scope of the Government program.” Agency for Int’l Dev. v. All. for Open Soc’y Int’l, Inc., 570 U.S. 205, 221 (2013) (hereinafter “AOSI”). In AOSI, this meant that a Policy Requirement conditioning the grant of public-health funds on recipients “explicitly agree[ing] with the Government’s policy to oppose prostitution and sex trafficking” was unconstitutional. Id. at 213. The Supreme Court explained in AOSI that “the Policy Requirement goes beyond preventing recipients from using private funds in a way that would undermine the federal program. It requires them to pledge allegiance to the Government’s policy of eradicating prostitution.” Id. at 220. As in AOSI, here “[t]he line is hardly clear,” id. at 215, but in our view, the Amendment does not go beyond preventing would-be commissioners from engaging in activity that would undermine the independence of Michigan’s redistricting commission, nor does it require them to pledge allegiance to any governmental policy. Far from limiting the exercise of constitutional rights as extraneous conditions, the eligibility criteria themselves “define the limits” of the Commission. Id. at 214. Nos. 19-2377/2420 Daunt et al. v. Benson et al. Page 18 Also instructive in the unconstitutional-conditions context are the Supreme Court’s political patronage cases, which address the propriety of “the conditioning of public employment on political faith.” Elrod, 427 U.S. at 357; see Branti v. Finkel, 445 U.S. 507 (1980); Rutan, 497 U.S. 62. In Elrod, the Supreme Court held that the practice of patronage dismissals—firing public employees because they were not loyal to the incumbent party—violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments because these dismissals “severely restrict[ed] political belief and association.” 427 U.S. at 372. In Branti, the Court followed Elrod in holding that “the continued employment of an assistant public defender cannot properly be conditioned upon his allegiance to the political party in control of the county government.” 445 U.S. at 519. And in Rutan, the Court held that “the rule of Elrod and Branti extends to promotion, transfer, recall, and hiring decisions based on party affiliation and support.” 497 U.S. at 79. Throughout these cases, the Court considered whether, as an exception to this general rule against patronage practices, “the hiring authority can demonstrate that party affiliation is an appropriate requirement for the effective performance of the public office involved,” Branti, 445 U.S. at 518, namely for certain “high-level employees,” Rutan, 497 U.S. at 74, but never applied this exception. On the one hand, this line of cases is clearly distinguishable, given that it involved individuals who faced adverse employment actions because of their association with a particular political party. In this case, by contrast, Daunt and others like him are barred from the Commission because of their associations with professional politics, regardless of which party they or their family member supported. Being fired from one’s job because one is a Republican “unquestionably inhibits protected belief and association,” Elrod, 427 U.S. at 359, in a way that the Amendment unquestionably does not. At first blush these cases appear to point in the opposite direction of Mitchell, Letter Carriers, and Clements, which upheld restrictions on who could hold office. Upon closer examination, however, the patronage cases actually reaffirm the principles articulated in Mitchell, Letter Carriers, and Clements. Indeed, the Supreme Court explained in Elrod that “the activities that were restrained by the legislation involved in [Mitchell and Letter Carriers] are characteristic of patronage practices”—that is, the same patronage practices that the Court in Elrod so harshly criticized. 427 U.S. at 367. In other words, barring governmental employees from “taking an active part in political management or political Nos. 19-2377/2420 Daunt et al. v. Benson et al. Page 19 campaigns,” Letter Carriers, 413 U.S. at 554, served to “safeguard the core interests of individual belief and association” that patronage-based systems undermined. Elrod, 427 U.S. at 371. The Elrod/Branti/Rutan line of patronage cases thus supports the conclusion that the eligibility criteria do not impose an unconstitutional condition on the plaintiffs-appellants.