Opinion ID: 4529763
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fish I

Text: The Fish plaintiffs brought suit seeking a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the DPOC requirement. The district court granted the preliminary injunction and “required [the Secretary] to register to vote any applicants previously unable to produce DPOC and to cease enforcement of Kansas’s DPOC requirement with respect to individuals who apply to register to vote at the Kansas Department of Motor Vehicles (‘DMV’) through the motor voter process.” Fish I, 840 F.3d at 716. The Secretary appealed the entry of the preliminary injunction, and we affirmed. Id. at 716–17. As recounted in more depth below, we held that section 5 of the NVRA preempted Kansas’s DPOC requirement. Id. at 716. The relevant portion of section 5 of the NVRA, known as the “motor-voter” provision, states: (2) The voter registration application portion of an application for a State motor vehicle driver’s license— (A) may not require any information that duplicates information required in the driver’s license portion of the form (other than a second signature or other information necessary under subparagraph (C)); (B) may require only the minimum amount of information necessary to—
(ii) enable State election officials to assess the eligibility of the applicant and to administer voter registration and other parts of the election process; 12 (C) shall include a statement that— (i) states each eligibility requirement (including citizenship); (ii) contains an attestation that the applicant meets each such requirement; and (iii) requires the signature of the applicant, under penalty of perjury . . . . 52 U.S.C. § 20504(c)(2)(A)S(C) (emphases added). In Fish I, we read subparagraph (C)’s “attestation requirement” as establishing “the presumptive minimum amount of information necessary for a state to carry out its eligibility-assessment and registration duties [under subparagraph (B)].” 840 F.3d at 737. However, we acknowledged that “whether the attestation requirement actually satisfies the minimum-information principle in a given case turns on the factual question of whether the attestation requirement is sufficient for a state to carry out these duties.” Id. at 738. We held that “in order for a state advocating for a DPOC regime to rebut the presumption that the attestation requirement is the minimum information necessary for it to carry out its eligibility-assessment and registration duties,” section 5 of the NVRA requires “[the] state to show that ‘a substantial number of noncitizens have successfully registered’ notwithstanding the attestation requirement.” Id. at 738–39 (quoting Kobach v. U.S. Election Assistance Comm’n (“EAC”), 772 F.3d 1183, 1198 (10th Cir. 2014)). We held that the Secretary had failed to demonstrate that a substantial number of noncitizens had successfully registered. Id. at 746–47. In particular, 13 the Secretary had only shown that between 2003 and 2013 “thirty noncitizens registered to vote.” Id. at 746. “These numbers [fell] well short of the showing necessary to rebut the presumption that attestation constitutes the minimum amount of information necessary for Kansas to carry out its eligibility-assessment and registration duties.” Id. at 747. Thus, we concluded that the plaintiffs’ challenge was likely to succeed on the merits. Id. at 750. We went on to address the remaining preliminary-injunction factors and concluded that the district court did not err in concluding that they, too, favored a preliminary injunction. Id. at 751S56. We thus affirmed the district court’s grant of the preliminary injunction. Id. at 756.