Opinion ID: 2736546
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: standard of review

Text: “[F]our factors . . . must [be] balance[d] when considering a motion for preliminary injunction: (1) whether the movant has a strong likelihood of success on the merits; (2) whether the movant would suffer irreparable injury without the injunction; (3) whether issuance of the injunction would cause substantial harm to others; and (4) whether the public interest would be served by issuance of the injunction.” City of Pontiac Retired Employees Ass’n v. Schimmel, 751 F.3d 427, 430 (6th Cir. 2014) (internal quotation marks omitted). “We review a district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction for an abuse of discretion.” Obama for America, 697 F.3d at 428. However, we review de novo the district court’s legal conclusions, and we review its factual findings for clear error. Id. Thus, “[t]he district court’s determination will be disturbed only if the district court relied upon clearly erroneous findings of fact, improperly applied the governing law, or used an erroneous legal standard.” McNeilly v. Land, 684 F.3d 611, 614 (6th Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). Moreover, “the ‘determination of No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 8 whether the movant is likely to succeed on the merits is a question of law and is accordingly reviewed de novo.’” Liberty Coins, LLC v. Goodman, 748 F.3d 682, 689 (6th Cir. 2014) (quoting Bays v. City of Fairborn, 668 F.3d 814, 819 (6th Cir. 2012)). B. The District Court’s Factual Findings Are Not Clearly Erroneous The district court analyzed the record evidence and made a number of factual findings in granting Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction. In particular, the district court’s opinion carefully considered the conclusions of Plaintiffs’ four expert witnesses (Smith, Roscigno, Burden, and Gronke) and Defendants’ three expert witnesses (Trende, McCarty, and Brunell). See R. 72 (D. Ct. Op. and Order at 26‒45) (Page ID #5873‒92). After assessing each, the district court credited Smith’s conclusion that, based on his statistical analysis, African Americans will be disproportionately and negatively affected by the reductions in early voting in SB 238 and Directive 2014-17. Id. at 44‒45 (Page ID #5891‒92). The district court also accepted Roscigno’s “undisputed” findings that disparities in employment and in residential, transportation, and childcare options between African American and white voters significantly increased the cost of casting a vote for African American voters. Id. at 45 (Page ID #5892). The district court then relied on Smith’s statistical findings and conclusions in its Equal Protection analysis, and it relied on both Smith’s and Roscigno’s findings in its Voting Rights Act analysis. Defendants have not challenged the admissibility of any of Plaintiffs’ experts’ conclusions under Daubert, either at the district court or on appeal. See Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). Indeed, Defendants’ brief makes little mention of the district court’s factual findings or its decision to credit the conclusions of Plaintiffs’ experts. Thus, whether or not the district court properly considered these expert findings is not before us. In any event, while they do not dispute Roscigno’s, Burden’s, or Gronke’s conclusions, to the extent Defendants and the General Assembly believe the district court improperly credited Smith’s findings over the conclusions offered by Defendants’ experts, they are mistaken. We review a district court’s factual findings for clear error. Williamson v. Recovery Ltd. P’ship, 731 F.3d 608, 627 (6th Cir. 2013). “When reviewing for clear error, we cannot substitute our judgment for that of the lower court but rather must uphold the lower court’s account of the evidence if it ‘is plausible in light of the record viewed in its entirety.’” Pledger v. United States, No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 9 236 F.3d 315, 320 (6th Cir. 2000) (quoting Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 574 (1985)). We will thus reverse the district court’s interpretation of the evidence “‘only where we are left with a definite and firm conviction that [the district court] committed a clear error of judgment.’” In re Scrap Metal Antitrust Litig., 527 F.3d 517, 528 (6th Cir. 2008) (quoting Conwood Co., L.P. v. U.S. Tobacco Co., 290 F.3d 768, 781 (6th Cir. 2002)). Consequently, “[i]f the district court interprets the evidence in a manner consistent with the record, we are required to uphold its decision even if we would have reached the opposite conclusion.” United States v. Darwich, 337 F.3d 645, 663 (6th Cir. 2003). Defendants and the General Assembly are unable to show that the district court clearly erred by crediting Smith’s statistical conclusions. First, contrary to the General Assembly’s claim, the record does not support a finding that the district court erred because Smith’s conclusions are based on faulty data. General Assembly Br. at 48‒51. The district court recognized at the outset of its analysis “that some significant limitations exist regarding the available election data,” including different election management systems and policies for tabulating absentee votes among the counties, which made statewide comparisons difficult. R. 72 (D. Ct. Op. and Order at 26‒27) (Page ID #5873‒74). Indeed, Smith suggested as much in his expert reports. R. 18-1 (Smith Rep. at 12) (Page ID #173); 53-11 (Smith Rebuttal Rep. at 1‒ 2, 25) (Page ID #1628‒29, 1652). Recognizing these limitations, Smith utilized several techniques based on entirely different statistical methods and data sources to determine whether the propensity of African Americans to cast EIP ballots in Ohio is greater than whites. See 53-11 (Smith Supp. Rep. at 1‒ 2, 25) (Page ID #1628‒29, 1652). In particular, Smith utilized a “triangulation” method, which relied on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Ohio, and county Boards of Elections, and included three different “standard ecological inference techniques” to analyze voting trends in the 2010 midterm and 2012 presidential elections. Id. at 1 (Page ID #1628). Then, in a separate analysis, Smith examined data from the Current Population Voting and Registration Supplement to determine whether African American voters in Ohio were disproportionately more likely to cast EIP ballots in the 2012 and 2008 elections based on this data. Id. at 1–2 (Page ID #1628‒29). As the district court found, by varying degrees, each of these examinations supports Smith’s No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 10 conclusion that African American voters in Ohio utilize EIP voting at higher rates than white voters in recent elections.1 Smith then supplemented his findings by citing additional studies indicating that African American and indigent voters utilized early voting more than white and affluent voters and would be negatively impacted by restrictions on early voting. See, e.g., R. 18-1 (Smith Rep. at 7, 17, 29–30) (Page ID #168, 178, 190–91); R. 72 (D. Ct. Op. and Order at 45–46) (Page ID #5892–93). These findings are further supported by expert reports submitted by Gronke and Burden and studies attached to Plaintiffs’ briefing to the district court.2 See R. 72 (D. Ct. Op. and Order at 45–46) (Page ID #5892–93); 53-5 (Gronke Rep. at 6‒12) (Page ID #1563‒69) (noting research indicating that African Americans disproportionately use early voting in many states and shortening the early-vote period negatively impacted turnout among African Americans); R. 53-4 (Burden Rep. at 3) (Page ID #1555) (citing research noting that “restrictions on early voting in Florida finds that it deterred participation of black voters”). Although, standing alone, any one analysis may not have proven dispositive, when reading them together and as properly supported by other record evidence, the district court did not clearly err by crediting Smith’s analysis despite the possibility of flaws in the data. Second, for the same reason, limitations in Smith’s analysis of the 2010 election do not demonstrate that the district court clearly erred by relying on Smith’s findings. General 1 The General Assembly argues that the district court clearly erred because it relied on Smith to find that African American voters used EIP voting at “far greater rates” than white voters in Ohio, but Smith himself never made such a claim. General Assembly Br. at 46‒48. Although it is true that Smith never used the phrase “far greater rate,” see, e.g., R. 18-1 (Smith Rep. at 17) (Page ID #178) (finding African Americans used EIP at a “greater rate” than whites), he did conclude that in the 2012 election African Americans used EIP voting at a “much higher” rate than white voters and characterized his findings as “dramatic.” Id. He further noted the “strong empirical evidence” showing that African Americans cast EIP absentee ballots more than whites and do so on the days eliminated by SB 238 and Directive 2014-06. Id. at 4 (Page ID #165). Based on this, and the additional evidence the district court relied on to support its findings, the district court did not clearly err in its characterization of Smith’s conclusions. 2 Presumably due to the expedited nature of the proceedings, both parties relied on evidence in the form of reports by experts and studies cited therein to support their respective positions. See 11A CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT, ARTHUR R. MILLER, & MARY KAY KANE, FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 2949 (3d ed. 2001) (“[I]nasmuch as the grant of a preliminary injunction is discretionary, the trial court should be allowed to give even inadmissible evidence some weight when it is thought advisable to do so in order to serve the primary purpose of preventing irreparable harm before a trial can be had.”); Certified Restoration Dry Cleaning Network, L.L.C. v. Tenke Corp., 511 F.3d 535, 542 (6th Cir. 2007) (“Given [its] limited purpose, ‘a preliminary injunction is customarily granted on the basis of procedures that are less formal and evidence that is less complete than in a trial on the merits.’”) (quoting Univ. of Texas v. Camenisch, 451 U.S. 390, 395 (1981)); Mullins v. City of New York, 626 F.3d 47, 52 (2d Cir. 2010) (concluding “that hearsay evidence may be considered by a district court in determining whether to grant a preliminary injunction”). No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 11 Assembly Br. at 51‒52. Defendants cite the 2010 analysis to show that the early-voting days that were eliminated were among the days with the lowest African American voting rates. Appellants Br. at 56. And it is true that Smith’s 2010 analysis considered only data from five of eighty-eight Ohio counties. But, here, it is Defendants who attempt to cherry-pick the findings. Again, Smith’s analysis of the 2010 mid-term election was one of a number of studies cited by the district court in support of its conclusion that African Americans would be disproportionately impacted by restrictions in EIP voting. Moreover, the five counties analyzed by Smith in his findings based on the 2010 election make up one-third of Ohio’s population and nearly seventythree percent of all African Americans living in Ohio, and the findings overall indicate that African Americans participated in EIP at a higher rate than white voters in these counties. R. 18- 1 (Smith Rep. at 10) (Page ID #171); R. 53-11 (Smith Rebuttal Rep. at 22) (Page ID #1649). Thus, the 2010 analysis is certainly relevant to whether African American voters utilized early voting more than white voters, and the district court properly considered this finding along with the other evidence in the record in reaching its conclusion. Third, the General Assembly’s suggestion that Smith’s analyses relating to the 2012 and 2008 elections are not probative here because these were presidential elections and the 2014 election is an off-year election is not well-taken. General Assembly Br. at 52‒53. Plaintiffs’ complaint does not limit its challenge to the 2014 midterm elections. See R. 1 (Complaint) (Page ID #1). Indeed, SB 238 is the law in Ohio and will apply to all elections moving forward, and nothing in the record suggests that the restrictions on early voting in Directive 2014-17 will be limited to the 2014 election. In fact, Directive 2014-17 expressly applies to “Presidential General Elections.” R. 18-37 (Directive 2014-17 at 1) (Page ID #532). Thus, any attempt to diminish the probative value of Smith’s 2012 and 2008 election analyses for this reason has no merit. Similarly, attempts to disregard voter turnout among African Americans in the 2012 and 2008 elections because African American voters were targeted by an African American presidential candidate are equally meritless. General Assembly Br. at 53. The suggestion is that African American voters in Ohio—a “battleground” state, central to any presidential candidate’s chance of winning an election—will not be as heavily targeted in future elections. Id. But this claim is both unsupported by record evidence and, given the continued importance of Ohio in national elections, contrary to common sense. See R. 41-3 (Trende Rep. at 31) (Page ID #1041) No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 12 (noting that African American voter turnout has risen in Ohio and the United States as a whole since 2004); see also Florida v. United States, 885 F. Supp. 2d 299, 326 (D.D.C. 2012) (“[W]e cannot ignore elections in which minority candidates make breakthroughs in winning elected office on the assumption that future elections will revert to the status quo.”). Fourth, Defendants and the General Assembly suggest that the district court should not have credited Smith’s analysis because Defendants’ expert, Sean Trende, performed a statistical analysis that produced different results. See Appellants Br. at 56; General Assembly Br. at 52. While we acknowledge that a Daubert issue is not before us, it remains true that district courts play the role of “gatekeeper” and are charged “with evaluating the relevance and reliability of proffered expert testimony with heighted care.” Surles ex rel. Johnson v. Greyhound Lines, Inc., 474 F.3d 288, 295 (6th Cir. 2007). For this reason, we generally defer to the district court’s decision to credit one expert over another. In re Scrap Metal, 527 F.3d at 528 (recognizing the deference afforded a district court’s assessment of expert testimony). Moreover, “[w]here there are two permissible views of the evidence, the factfinder’s choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous.” Anderson, 470 U.S. at 574. Here, Trende analyzed EIP turnout from the 2010 elections and found that, contrary to Smith’s conclusion, “it is difficult to conclude that early voting enhances African-American turnout.” R. 41-3 (Trende Rep. at 42) (Page ID #1052). He acknowledged, however, that the “strength of the relationship tested depends on the judgment call that is made about the different variables.” Id. Indeed, Trende asserted that much of his analysis—as was undoubtedly the case for Smith’s analysis—reflected judgment calls that could “reasonably be argued either way.” Id. at 34 (Page ID #1044). The district court’s decision in assessing the evidence to then credit Smith’s findings—an academic in the area of electoral processes and election issues, R. 18-1 (Smith Rep. at 2‒3) (Page ID #163‒64)—and the judgment calls inherent in the same, over Trende’s—an elections analyst for the political website RealClearPolitics, who apparently has not conducted a peer-reviewed analysis similar to the one at issue here, R. 41-3 (Trende Rep. at 3) (Page ID #1013); R. 53-6 (7/30/14 Trende Dep. at 281) (Page ID #1576)—is afforded deference. In re Scrap Metal, 527 F.3d at 528. Given this, along with the multiple methods and No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 13 data sources used by Smith and other record evidence corroborating his findings, we conclude that the district court did not clearly err by crediting Smith’s findings over Trende’s. Finally, the General Assembly’s claim that the district court erred because Smith’s methodology is flawed also fails. The General Assembly asserts that Smith’s findings are unreliable because factors other than race could explain the results of Smith’s census block analysis of the 2012 election, General Assembly Br. at 54‒55; however, no evidence is offered supporting this. Moreover, the other record evidence suggesting that African American voters utilize EIP voting at higher rates than white voters indicates that race, rather than some other variable, helps explain Smith’s findings in his 2012 census block analysis. At the least, the district court did not clearly err in so finding. See Surles, 474 F.3d at 295 (noting the “broad discretion” district courts possess to assess the reliability of expert findings); see also McLean v. 988011 Ontario, Ltd., 224 F.3d 797, 801 (6th Cir. 2000) (“[M]ere ‘weaknesses in the factual basis of an expert witness’ opinion . . . bear on the weight of the evidence rather than on its admissibility.’”) (quoting United States v. L.E. Cooke Co., 991 F.2d 336, 342 (6th Cir. 1993)). Similarly, Defendants’ expert, Dr. Nolan McCarty, and Smith quibble over whether Smith should have conducted his census block analysis at the county level rather than the precinct level—McCarty claims the results are more accurate at the county level while Smith asserts that “aggregat[ing] up . . . dramatically worsens the problem of aggregation bias.” Compare R. 53-11 (Smith Rebuttal Rep. at 5‒6) (Page ID # 1632‒33), with General Assembly Br. at 55‒56. And the General Assembly claims that the district court gave too much weight to the “direction of the relationship” between African American voters and EIP voting in the 2012 and 2010 analyses and ignored the “degree of the relationship,” which it claims is small. General Assembly Br. at 56‒57. But neither argument supports reversal—again, given the other record evidence supporting Smith’s conclusion and the deference afforded the district court, the district court’s position is plausible based on the record as a whole, and so there is no clear error. King v. Zamiara, 680 F.3d 686, 694 (6th Cir. 2012), cert. denied, 133 S. Ct. 985 (2013) (“If the district court’s account is ‘plausible in light of the record viewed in its entirety, the court of appeals may not reverse.’”) (quoting Anderson, 470 U.S. at 574). No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 14 Consequently, Defendants and the General Assembly have failed to show that the district court clearly erred in crediting Smith’s statistical conclusions. C. Equal Protection Clause Claim The right to vote is a “fundamental” right. Harper v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 670 (1966); Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 433 (1992) (“It is beyond cavil that ‘voting is of the most fundamental significance under our constitutional structure.’”) (quoting Illinois Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U.S. 173, 184 (1979)). “Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined.” Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 17 (1964). Moreover, “[t]he right to vote is protected in more than the initial allocation of the franchise. Equal protection applies as well to the manner of its exercise.” Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 104 (2000); League of Women Voters of Ohio, 548 F.3d at 476 (quoting the same). Two aspects of “the manner of its exercise” warrant special attention: “[t]he Equal Protection Clause applies when a state either classifies voters in disparate ways or places restrictions on the right to vote.” Obama for America, 697 F.3d at 428 (emphasis added) (internal citations omitted). Of course, “the Constitution provides that States may prescribe “‘[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives,’ Art. I § 4, cl. 1, and the Court therefore has recognized that States retain the power to regulate their own elections.” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 433; Ne. Ohio Coal. for the Homeless v. Husted, 696 F.3d 580, 592 (6th Cir. 2012). And practically, “there must be a substantial regulation of elections if they are to be fair and honest and if some sort of order, rather than chaos, is to accompany the democratic processes.” Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730 (1974). “When equal protection challenges ask us to resolve these competing interests, we calibrate the equal protection standard to ‘[t]he precise character of the state’s action and the nature of the burden on voters.’” Ne. Ohio Coal. for the Homeless, 696 F.3d at 592 (quoting Obama for America, 697 F.3d at 428). State regulations that do not treat similarly situated voters differently and do not burden the fundamental right to vote are assessed through rational basis review. Obama for America, 697 F.3d at 429; Ne. Ohio Coal. for the Homeless, 696 F.3d at 592. On the other end of the spectrum, strict scrutiny applies to state regulations that impose “severe” No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 15 burdens on the fundamental right to vote. Obama for America, 697 F.3d at 429 (citing Harper, 383 U.S. at 670, and Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434). “For the majority of cases falling between these extremes, we apply the ‘flexible’ Anderson-Burdick balancing test.” Ne. Ohio Coal. for the Homeless, 696 F.3d at 592 (quoting Obama for America, 697 F.3d at 429). The Anderson-Burdick test provides as follows: A court considering a challenge to a state election law must weigh “the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate” against “the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule,” taking into consideration “the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiffs’ rights.” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434 (quoting Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 789 (1983)). “There is no ‘litmus test’ to separate valid from invalid voting regulations; courts must weigh the burden on voters against the state’s asserted justifications and ‘make the “hard judgment” that our adversary system demands.’” Obama for America, 697 F.3d at 429 (quoting Crawford v. Marion Cnty. Election Bd., 553 U.S. 181, 190 (2008) (Stevens, J., announcing the judgment of the Court)). Even a minimal burden “must be justified by relevant and legitimate state interests ‘sufficiently weighty to justify the limitation.’” Crawford, 553 U.S. at 191 (quoting Norman v. Reed, 502 U.S. 279, 288–89 (1992)). The district court “characterize[d] the overall degree of burden on voting imposed by SB 238 and Directive 2014-17 as significant although not severe.” R. 72 (D. Ct. Op. and Order at 53) (Page ID #5900). Focusing on SB 238, the district court found that its elimination of “Golden Week” burdened African American and low-income voters in two ways. Id. at 50 (Page ID #5897). First, SB 238 in conjunction with Directive 2014-17 reduced the overall number of EIP voting days from 35 to 28 days. The district court noted evidence in the record that 67,408 Ohioans voted in 2008 during Golden Week; 26,230 did so in 2010; and 89,224 voters did so in 2012. Id. The district court also credited statistical and survey analysis by Plaintiffs’ expert Smith that African American voters in Ohio have higher EIP voting rates than white voters, and that African American voters in the 2008, 2010, and 2012 elections “disproportionately cast EIP absentee ballots on days that would have been eliminated by SB 238 and Directive 2014-06.” R. No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 16 72 (D. Ct. Op. and Order at 32, 50) (Page ID #5879, 5897); R. 18-1 (Smith Rep. at 31) (Page ID #192). The district court cited four other statistical studies in the record on racial early-voting patterns in Ohio that it found supported Smith’s conclusions. Id. at 45–46 (Page ID #5892–93). Second, the district court concluded that the elimination of Golden Week “burdens the voting rights of lower income and homeless individuals” because the record reflected that such individuals “move frequently” as well as “lack access to transportation,” which combine to make it harder for such individuals to maintain accurate registration. R. 72 (D. Ct. Op. and Order at 51) (Page ID #5898). Thus, the ability to register and vote on the same day “can make the difference between being able to exercise the fundamental right to vote and not being able to do so.” Id. The court pointed to evidence in the record that 12,842 voters used Golden Week to register or update their registration and vote in 2008; 1,651 voters did so in 2010; and 5,844 voters did so in 2012. Id. Turning to Directive 2014-17, the district court found that it burdened African American and lower-income voters by eliminating all evening voting hours for non-presidential elections and by providing only one Sunday of EIP voting, the Sunday before Election Day. Id. at 51–53 (Page ID #5898–5900). The district court noted that the record reflected that lower-income voters are “more likely to rely on public transportation and work wage-based jobs wherein they are less likely” to be able to vote between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. at the one early-voting location permitted in each county, which might be a great distance away. Id. at 53 (Page ID #5900). Regarding the elimination of all but one Sunday of EIP voting, the court pointed to evidence in the record that since the instatement of EIP voting, African Americans have come to rely on Sunday voting through “Souls to the Polls initiatives,” in which churches have leveraged the transportation they already provide to and from church to bring voters to EIP voting locations. Id. at 52 (Page ID #5899). Souls to the Polls organizers reported that, during the one permitted day of Sunday voting during the 2012 general election, there were long lines of mainly African American voters. Id. While the district court acknowledged that Souls to the Polls organizers could switch to the two Saturdays that are still designated EIP voting days under Directive 201417, the court concluded that this would still impose “some burden” because churches are already organized to provide transportation on Sundays. Id. at 53 (Page ID #5900). No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 17 Therefore, because the district court found that the burden imposed on Plaintiffs was “significant,” it proceeded to apply the Anderson-Burdick test to SB 238 and Directive 2014-17. R. 72 (D. Ct. Op. and Order at 55) (Page ID #5902). Defendants argue that rational basis review, rather than the Anderson-Burdick test, is the proper standard of review for two reasons. First, they argue that “[t]he ‘right to vote’ has never included the ‘right to receive absentee ballots.’” Appellants Br. at 18 (quoting McDonald v. Bd. of Election Comm’rs of Chicago, 394 U.S. 802, 807 (1969)). Second, Defendants argue that when a facially neutral voting law is at issue, as SB 238 and Directive 2014-17 are, the Supreme Court in Crawford held that Anderson-Burdick applies only if the law “severely burdens the right to vote of the general class of state voters.” Id. at 19. Otherwise, Defendants assert that traditional Equal Protection Clause principles govern—which require proof of discriminatory intent—and Plaintiffs have not established that either SB 238 or Directive 2014-17 was adopted with discriminatory intent. Id. at 19, 27. Finally, if Anderson-Burdick review does apply, Defendants argue that the district court improperly determined that the burden imposed on voters represented by Plaintiffs is “significant.” Id. at 31. 1. The District Court Properly Applied Anderson-Burdick Review We addressed Defendants’ first argument regarding McDonald in Obama for America. 697 F.3d 423. In McDonald, the Supreme Court did not apply rational basis review to the challenged Illinois statute allowing only certain categories of voters to receive absentee ballots solely because absentee ballots were at issue. Rather, [t]he McDonald plaintiffs failed to make out a claim for heightened scrutiny because they had presented no evidence to support their allegation that they were being prevented from voting. See O’Brien v. Skinner, 414 U.S. 524, 529 (1974) (“Essentially the Court’s disposition of the claims in McDonald rested on failure of proof.”); Goosby v. Osser, 409 U.S. 512, 520–22 [(1973)] (finding that McDonald itself suggested a different result if plaintiffs had presented evidence that the state was effectively preventing them from voting). Obama for America, 697 F.3d at 431 (emphasis added). Thus, in Obama for America, we held that the district court properly applied the Anderson-Burdick balancing test, rather than rational basis review, to evaluate whether the No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 18 challenged Directive’s elimination of early in-person voting for the three days immediately preceding Election Day violated the Equal Protection Clause. Id. Unlike the plaintiffs in McDonald, we noted that “Plaintiffs introduced extensive evidence that a significant number of Ohio voters will in fact be precluded from voting without the additional three days of in-person early voting.” Id. This evidence included “statistical studies that estimated approximately 100,000 Ohio voters would choose to vote during the three-day period before Election Day, and that these voters are disproportionately ‘women, older, and of lower income and education attainment,’” groups which the plaintiffs represented. Id. (internal citation omitted). The defendants in that case also argued that the plaintiffs would not actually be precluded from voting as required by McDonald because they had “ample” other means of voting, including by mail, voting EIP at other times, or on Election Day. Id. However, we held not clearly erroneous the district court’s conclusion that early voters would not be able to exercise their right to vote in person because the challenged Directive also eliminated all evening and weekend hours of EIP voting, times during which early voters would likely have voted in the past because they tend to have lower incomes and less education than election day voters. Id. We did not read McDonald to require proof that there was no possibility that the plaintiffs would find a way to adjust and vote through the remaining options. We acknowledged that the challenged law “does not absolutely prohibit early voters from voting,” but focused on the evidence in the record that the plaintiffs’ “ability to cast a ballot is impeded by Ohio’s statutory scheme.” Id. at 433. To the extent that McDonald spoke in terms of “precluding” an individual from voting, which might imply the necessity of such proof, we note that McDonald was decided before the development of the Anderson-Burdick test. Thus, the McDonald Court applied a two-tier test for evaluating restrictions on the right to vote, rational basis review for no burdens and strict scrutiny for “severe” burdens, a threshold that more clearly invites consideration of “preclusion.” However, as noted above, that two-tier test has evolved into the Anderson-Burdick framework, under which burdens that fall between those two extremes can still be found to violate the Equal Protection Clause. In more recent cases, the Supreme Court has not required absolute certainty in predicting how many voters would be prevented from voting by laws that impose burdens on the right to vote. See, e.g., Crawford, 553 U.S. at 221 (Souter, J., dissenting) (stating that “Petitioners, to be sure, failed to nail down precisely how No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 19 great the cohort of discouraged and totally deterred voters will be, but empirical precision beyond the foregoing numbers has never been demanded for raising a voting-rights claim.” and citing Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, 552 U.S. 442, 461–62 (2008) (Roberts, C. J., concurring) (“Nothing in my analysis requires the parties to produce studies regarding voter perceptions on this score”); Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 335 n.5 (1972) (“[I]t would be difficult to determine precisely how many would-be voters throughout the country cannot vote because of durational residence requirements.”); and Bullock v. Carter, 405 U.S. 134, 144 (1972) (taking account of “the obvious likelihood” that candidate filing fees would “fall more heavily on the less affluent segment of the community, whose favorites may be unable to pay the large costs”)). Thus, in this case the district court properly held that whether voters might adjust to vote during a different time in EIP voting such that overall turnout might not be affected “is not determinative of the Equal Protection analysis.” R. 72 (D. Ct. Op. and Order at 50) (Page ID #5897).3 Like the plaintiffs in Obama for America, Plaintiffs in this case presented ample evidence that African American, lower-income, and homeless voters disproportionately have used in past elections the EIP voting times that Directive 2014-17 and SB 238 eliminated, and that the number of individuals who had previously voted during these periods was not insignificant. For example, the number of voters in Golden Week alone ranged from 26,230 in 2010 to 89,224 in 2012. R. 72 (D. Ct. Op. and Order at 50) (Page ID #5897). And the regulations at issue in the case reduce the overall time for EIP voting more than the three days that had been eliminated in Obama for America. Moreover, unlike the plaintiffs in Obama for America, Plaintiffs also presented evidence to show that voting by mail is not actually a viable “alternative means of access to the ballot” for the groups they represent. Cf. Obama for America, 697 F.3d at 440 3 In a relatively recent case, the Second Circuit considered a claim that a New York statute allowing absentee voting for all elections except elections for political party county committees violated the First Amendment by impermissibly burdening New York citizens’ right to vote. Price v. New York State Bd. of Elections, 540 F.3d 101, 103-04 (2d Cir. 2008). The district court had analyzed the statute under rational basis review, citing McDonald, but the Second Circuit held that the law should have been analyzed under the Anderson-Burdick balancing test. Id. at 108-09 (“The defendants assert that pure rational basis review should be utilized in this case in reviewing the constitutionality of Election Law § 7–122. They are incorrect. Under Burdick’s ‘flexible standard,’ the court must actually ‘weigh’ the burdens imposed on the plaintiff against ‘the precise interests put forward by the State,’ and the court must take ‘into consideration the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff’s rights.’”) (internal citation omitted) (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 789). No. 14-3877 Ohio State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Husted et al. Page 20 (White, J., concurring) (noting that the study in the record “did not consider the extent to which these voters would or could avail themselves of other voting options, either by mail ballot or inperson absentee ballot at other times, or in-person voting on election day.”) (emphasis added). The district court noted that “the record is undisputed that African Americans, lower-income individuals, and the homeless are distrustful of the mail and/or voting by mail.” R. 72 (D. Ct. Op. and Order at 54) (Page ID #5901). Additionally, the district court considered the fact that “[t]he associated costs and more complex mechanics of voting by mail, coupled with other information in the record concerning the enumerated groups including homelessness, lower educational attainment, more limited financial resources, reliance on public transportation, and transience” to bolster its conclusion that “voting by mail may not be a suitable alternative for many voters.” Id. The record also reflected that lower-income voters, because of their reliance on public transportation and higher likelihood of working in wage-based jobs, would face substantial difficulties in voting between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Id. at 53 (Page ID #5900). Under Obama for America, then, the district court properly concluded that Plaintiffs had presented sufficient evidence that the groups they represent are in fact significantly burdened by Directive 2014-17 and SB 238 such that McDonald’s rational basis standard does not apply.4 2. Crawford Does Not Foreclose Applying Anderson-Burdick Review In Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, we squarely addressed the applicability of Anderson-Burdick to facially neutral restrictions on voting. 696 F.3d 580. The State defendant in that case argued that the challenged practice—“Ohio’s automatic disqualification rule for wrong-precinct ballots”—“treats all voters equally and therefore does not involve any 4