Opinion ID: 1467923
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Residency Requirement for Petition Circulators

Text: The first provision at issue here is the requirement that petition circulators be residents of the state. Petition circulators must be qualified to register to vote in [Arizona]. Ariz.Rev.Stat. § 16-321(D). The provision enumerating the requirements for voter registration in turn provides, in relevant part: Every resident of the state is qualified to register to vote if he . . . [w]ill have been a resident of the state twenty-nine days next preceding the election, . . . . Id. § 16-101(A)(3). Plaintiffs contend that such a residency requirement unconstitutionally burdens their rights to speech and association because it interferes with substantially more core political speech than is necessary. The leading decision on qualifications for petition circulators is Buckley, 525 U.S. 182, 119 S.Ct. 636, 142 L.Ed.2d 599, which involved a challenge to Colorado's regulation of initiative-petition circulators. One of the restrictions considered in that case was a requirement that circulators actually be registered to vote in the state. Id. at 186, 119 S.Ct. 636. The Court first stated, as it had done in Meyer v. Grant , that [p]etition circulation . . . is `core political speech,' because it involves `interactive communication concerning political change,' and that First Amendment protection for such interaction is therefore `at its zenith.' Id. at 186-87, 119 S.Ct. 636 (quoting Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 422, 425, 108 S.Ct. 1886, 100 L.Ed.2d 425 (1988)). The Court then determined that the registration requirement imposed a severe burden on the speech rights of individuals involved with the initiative process because it significantly decreased the pool of potential circulators, which in turn limited the size of the audience that could hear the initiative proponents' message. See id. at 192 & n. 12, 193-96, 119 S.Ct. 636. The state attempted to justify the burden as necessary to ensure circulators were subject to the state's subpoena power, but the Court found that the state's separate residency requirement achieved the same end, and agreed with the Tenth Circuit's statement that it did so more precisely. Id. at 196-97, 119 S.Ct. 636. The Court expressly did not decide the validity of the separate residency requirement because it was not challenged in that case. See id. at 197, 119 S.Ct. 636. Arizona's residency provision appears similar to the residency requirement described in Buckley and is, of course, less restrictive than the provision invalidated in Buckley because the Arizona provision does not require circulators to be actual registered voters. While the district court correctly observed that there remain millions of potential Arizona circulators, the residency requirement nevertheless excludes from eligibility all persons who support the candidate but who, like Nader himself, live outside the state of Arizona. Such a restriction creates a severe burden on Nader and his out-of-state supporters' speech, voting and associational rights. Because the restriction creates a severe burden on plaintiffs' First Amendment rights, strict scrutiny applies. This is a conclusion we believe to be mandated by the Supreme Court in Buckley. The Court held in Buckley that significantly reducing the number of potential circulators imposed a severe burden on rights of political expression. See id. at 194-95, 119 S.Ct. 636. This conclusion is also supported by two more recent circuit decisions. In Chandler v. City of Arvada, the Tenth Circuit held that a city ordinance requiring petition circulators to be residents imposed a severe burden on the speech rights of initiative proponents. 292 F.3d 1236, 1238-39, 1241-42 (10th Cir.2002). It applied strict scrutiny. The court stated that [s]trict scrutiny is applicable where the government restricts the overall quantum of speech available to the election or voting process. . . . Id. at 1241-42 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The court specifically ruled that strict scrutiny must be applied when the rights of potential petition circulators are restricted. Quoting from an earlier Tenth Circuit decision, it said that strict scrutiny must be `employed where the quantum of speech is limited due to restrictions on . . . the available pool of circulators or other supporters of a candidate or initiative, as in [ Buckley ] and Meyer. ' Id. (quoting Campbell v. Buckley, 203 F.3d 738, 745 (10th Cir.2000)). In Krislov, the Seventh Circuit held that an in-district residency requirement, which operated as an in-state residency requirement for a candidate for the U.S. Senate, severely burdened candidates' rights to association and ballot access. 226 F.3d at 855-56, 857, 860-62. The court explained, What is particularly important in this case [in assessing the severity of the burden] . . . is the number of people the. . . requirements exclude from gathering signatures and thus disseminating the candidates' political message. . . . [The residency requirement] places a substantial burden on the candidates' First Amendment rights by making it more difficult for the candidates to disseminate their political views, to choose the most effective means of conveying their message, to associate in a meaningful way with the prospective solicitors for the purposes of eliciting political change, to gain access to the ballot, and to utilize the endorsement of their candidacies which can be implicit in a solicitor's efforts to gather signatures on the candidates' behalf. Id. at 860, 862 (citing Buckley, 525 U.S. at 193 n. 15, 119 S.Ct. 636). A brief Eighth Circuit opinion came to the opposite conclusion and upheld a residency requirement for initiative-petition circulators. See Initiative & Referendum Institute v. Jaeger, 241 F.3d 614, 617 (8th Cir.2001). Krislov had been decided a few months earlier, but Jaeger did not cite it. The Tenth Circuit in Chandler did cite Jaeger and disagreed with it. See Chandler, 292 F.3d at 1244. We do not find Jaeger persuasive. The state contends here that if the standard is strict scrutiny, then the restriction is justified by the state's compelling interest in preventing fraud in the election process. It points to the evidence it presented of past election fraud in Arizona. A state's interest in ensuring the integrity of the election process and preventing fraud is compelling. See Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1, 4, 127 S.Ct. 5, 166 L.Ed.2d 1 (2006) (per curiam). We therefore agree with Arizona that the state's interest in preventing election fraud is a compelling one. The state, however, bears the burden of proving that a regulation is narrowly tailored. See ACLU of Nev. v. Heller, 378 F.3d 979, 997 (9th Cir.2004). The state contends that this restriction is narrowly tailored to ensure that circulators are subject to the state's subpoena power, and that the state can locate them within the ten-day period allotted for petition challenges. Plaintiffs argue that requiring circulators to submit to jurisdiction by agreement would achieve the same end and would be more narrowly tailored to further the state's interest in preventing fraud. Federal courts have generally looked with favor on requiring petition circulators to agree to submit to jurisdiction for purposes of subpoena enforcement, and the courts have viewed such a system to be a more narrowly tailored means than a residency requirement to achieve the same result. See Chandler, 292 F.3d at 1242-44 (holding that city residency requirement was substantially broader than necessary to ensure the integrity of the petition process in part because the city could instead require circulators to submit to jurisdiction of the city for subpoena enforcement); Krislov, 226 F.3d at 866 n. 7 (invalidating residency requirement and suggesting agreement to submit to jurisdiction as permissible restriction to further state's interest in preventing fraud); Frami, 255 F.Supp.2d at 970 (noting that requiring petition circulators to agree to submit to jurisdiction for subpoena enforcement was a less onerous method[ ] than a residency requirement for serving the state's interest in ensuring circulators were subject to the state's jurisdiction). Cf. Kean v. Clark, 56 F.Supp.2d 719, 733 (S.D.Miss.1999) (holding that a residency requirement was narrowly tailored, but without considering any consent to jurisdiction alternative). The state responds that petition circulators could conceivably be spread throughout the country, and that given the narrow timeframe for petition challenges in Arizona, such a consent to jurisdiction system would be unworkable. The state does not provide any evidence, however, to support this contention, observing only that professional petition circulators can be nomadic. Nor did the state ever contend that its history of fraud was related to non-resident circulators, a history that might justify regulating non-residents differently from residents. See Krislov, 226 F.3d at 866 n. 7 ([I]f the use of non-citizens were shown to correlate with a high incidence of fraud, a State might have a compelling interest in further regulating noncitizen circulators.); Frami, 255 F.Supp.2d at 970 (holding a residency requirement was not narrowly tailored to serve the state's interest in preventing fraud because defendant had not even alleged that the state has experienced problems in the past with non-resident petition circulators or that such circulators are more likely to engage in fraud than in-state. . . circulators.). We conclude that the state did not meet its burden of showing that this residency requirement is narrowly tailored to further the state's compelling interest in preventing fraud. On the basis of the record before us, the requirement cannot be sustained.