Opinion ID: 4529763
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Crawford v. Marion County Election Board

Text: Crawford involved “the constitutionality of an Indiana statute requiring citizens voting in person on election day, or casting a ballot in person at the office of the circuit court clerk prior to election day, to present photo identification issued by the government.” 553 U.S. at 185 (plurality opinion of Stevens, J.). The Court—in two plurality opinions, one by Justice Stevens and one by Justice Scalia—upheld the constitutionality of the statute under the Anderson-Burdick balancing test. Id. at 189S90 (plurality opinion of Stevens, J.); id. at 204S05 (plurality opinion of Scalia, J.). We have held that Justice Stevens’s opinion is controlling, and so we focus on that opinion here. See Santillanes, 546 F.3d at 1321 (“Following Crawford, it appears that Justice Stevens’s plurality opinion controls, a position advocated by the Plaintiffs in the present case because it is the narrowest majority position.”); id. at 1321S25 (citing, in the analysis, only to Justice Stevens’s opinion); see also Foley, supra, at 676 (“The controlling opinion in [Crawford] was written by Stevens and joined by Roberts and Kennedy.”). Justice Stevens’s opinion—joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy—started its discussion of the relevant legal standard with Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, supra, a case that invalidated a poll-tax under the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Stevens explained that Harper had not 34 invalidated the poll-tax because of any racial classification or animus; instead, it invalidated the poll-tax as “invidious because it was irrelevant to the voter’s qualifications.” Crawford, 553 U.S. at 189; see Harper, 383 U.S. at 668 (“To introduce wealth or payment of a fee as a measure of a voter’s qualifications is to introduce a capricious or irrelevant factor. The degree of the discrimination is irrelevant. In this context—that is, as a condition of obtaining a ballot—the requirement of fee paying causes an ‘invidious’ discrimination that runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause.” (citation omitted) (quoting Skinner v. Okla. ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942))). Justice Stevens thus deduced the rule that “even rational restrictions on the right to vote are invidious if they are unrelated to voter qualifications.” Crawford, 553 U.S. at 189. At the same time, Justice Stevens acknowledged “that ‘evenhanded restrictions that protect the integrity and reliability of the electoral process itself’ are not invidious and satisfy the standard set forth in Harper.” Id. at 189S90 (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 788 n.9). But determining how to “neatly separate valid from invalid restrictions” is not always an easy task. Id. at 190. Notably, Justice Stevens applied the Anderson-Burdick balancing test even though the voter-identification law at issue was not “unrelated to voter qualifications.” Id. at 189; see id. at 193 (noting that Congress had indicated “that photo identification is one effective method of establishing a voter’s 35 qualification to vote”). Instead, “[h]owever slight th[e] burden [imposed on the right to vote] may appear, as Harper demonstrates, it must be justified by relevant and legitimate state interests ‘sufficiently weighty to justify the limitation.’” Id. at 191 (quoting Norman v. Reed, 502 U.S. 279, 288S89 (1992)). In other words, Anderson-Burdick scrutiny is required even when the burden imposed by a voteridentification law has some relationship to voter qualifications and even when the burden imposed may appear slight. An important question then is exactly what this scrutiny entails. Justice Stevens’s opinion explained that the degree of scrutiny was “flexible.” Id. at 190 n.8; see Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434 (explaining that under Anderson the mere fact that a burden was imposed does not itself mandate strict scrutiny; instead, “a more flexible standard applies”); accord Campbell v. Davidson, 233 F.3d 1229, 1233 (10th Cir. 2000) (applying “the flexible standard of Burdick”). This “flexib[ility]” acknowledges that we must engage in a case-specific inquiry based on (1) “the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights . . . that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate,” (2) “the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule,” and (3) “the extent to which those [state] interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff’s rights.” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434 (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 789). Thus, the scrutiny we apply will wax and wane with the severity of the burden imposed on the right to vote in 36 any given case; heavier burdens will require closer scrutiny, lighter burdens will be approved more easily. Id. (“Under this standard, the rigorousness of our inquiry into the propriety of a state election law depends upon the extent to which a challenged regulation burdens First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.”). We, and our sister circuits and commentators, have referred to this as a “sliding scale” test. Navajo Nation v. San Juan Cty., 929 F.3d 1270, 1283 (10th Cir. 2019); see Ariz. Libertarian Party v. Hobbs, 925 F.3d 1085, 1090 (9th Cir. 2019) (“We have described this approach as a ‘sliding scale’—the more severe the burden imposed, the more exacting our scrutiny; the less severe, the more relaxed our scrutiny.” (quoting Ariz. Green Party v. Reagan, 838 F.3d 983, 988 (9th Cir. 2016))); Foley, supra, at 675 (“Anderson and Burdick create a kind of sliding-scale balancing test, whereby the strength of the state’s justification required to defend its law depends on the severity of the burden that the law imposes on the would-be voter’s opportunity to cast a ballot . . . .”); see also Ne. Ohio Coal. for the Homeless v. Husted, 696 F.3d 580, 592 (6th Cir. 2012) (per curiam) (“While a rational basis standard applies to state regulations that do not burden the fundamental right to vote, strict scrutiny applies when a state’s restriction imposes ‘severe’ burdens. For the majority of cases falling between 37 these extremes, we apply the ‘flexible’ Anderson/Burdick balancing test.” (citations omitted)). 4 Justice Stevens—applying this “flexible” approach—then concluded that the photographic-identification requirement at issue in Crawford “impose[d] only a limited burden on voters’ rights.” 553 U.S. at 203 (quoting Burdick, 504 U.S. at 439). In particular, Justice Stevens relied heavily on the district court’s conclusion that the challengers “had ‘not introduced evidence of a single, individual Indiana resident who will be unable to vote’” as a result of the law “or who will have his or her right to vote unduly burdened by its requirements.” Id. at 187 (quoting Ind. Democratic Party v. Rokita, 458 F. Supp. 2d 775, 783 (S.D. 4 Justice Scalia would have abandoned this traditional understanding of the Anderson-Burdick balancing test as a flexible, sliding scale test. Instead, he characterized Burdick as “forg[ing] Anderson’s amorphous ‘flexible standard’ into” a more rigid “two-track approach.” Crawford, 553 U.S. at 205 (plurality opinion of Scalia, J.). Under his view, strict scrutiny would be applied to “severe” burdens while “nonsevere, nondiscriminatory restrictions” would be reviewed under “a deferential ‘important regulatory interests’ standard.” Id. at 204S05 (quoting Burdick, 504 U.S. at 433S34 ). Applying this framework to the law at issue in Crawford, Justice Scalia would have concluded that the burden imposed by Indiana’s photo-identification law was “simply not severe” and thus justified by Indiana’s generalized interests under a deferential standard. Id. at 209. But six Members of the Court—Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Stevens, Justice Kennedy, see id. at 190 n.8, and all three dissenters, see id. at 210 (Souter, J., joined by Ginsburg, J., dissenting); id. at 237 (Breyer, J., dissenting)—rejected Justice Scalia’s reframing of the Anderson-Burdick balancing test as involving only two distinct tracks. And, as we have previously held that Justice Stevens’s opinion is controlling, we must apply the “flexible” approach to the AndersonBurdick balancing test that was used by Justice Stevens, see Crawford, 553 U.S. at 190 n.8, as well as by the Court’s earlier cases, see Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434. 38 Ind. 2006)). Additionally, while Justice Stevens acknowledged that the law could impose a burden on those without photo identification, “the evidence in the record d[id] not provide [the Court] with the number of registered voters without photo identification.” Id. at 200. “Much of the argument about the numbers of such voters c[ame] from extrarecord, postjudgment studies, the accuracy of which ha[d] not been tested in the trial court.” Id. Thus, he concluded that any costs associated with requiring voters to acquire freely provided photographic identification did not “qualify as a substantial burden on the right to vote, or even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.” Id. at 198. This determination that the burden was not substantial was “record-based.” Id. at 208 (plurality opinion of Scalia, J.); see id. at 189 (plurality opinion of Stevens, J.) (“[T]he evidence in the record is not sufficient to support a facial attack on the validity of the entire statute . . . .” (emphasis added)); id. at 200 (plurality opinion of Stevens, J.) (“[O]n the basis of the evidence in the record it is not possible to quantify either the magnitude of the burden on this narrow class of voters or the portion of the burden imposed on them that is fully justified.” (emphasis added)). In light of this weak evidence of a burden, Justice Stevens concluded that the state’s justifications were “sufficiently weighty to justify the limitation.” Id. at 191 (quoting Norman, 502 U.S. at 288S89). In particular, Indiana had “unquestionably relevant” interests in election modernization, preventing voter 39 fraud, and safeguarding voter confidence. Id. Justice Stevens determined that these interests were “legitima[te]” and “importan[t],” even though, for example, “[t]he record contain[ed] no evidence of any [voter-impersonation] fraud actually occurring in Indiana.” Id. at 194, 196. Thus, the Crawford opinion demonstrates that when there is limited evidence of a burden on the right to vote, the state need not present concrete evidence to justify its assertion of legitimate or important generalized interests. See Santillanes, 546 F.3d at 1323 (“In requiring the City to present evidence of past instances of voting fraud, the district court imposed too high a burden on the City.”). However, when a more substantial burden is imposed on the right to vote, our review of the government’s interests is more “rigorous[].” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434; see also Anderson, 460 U.S. at 789 (“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.”); League of Women Voters of N.C. v. North Carolina, 769 F.3d 224, 246 (4th Cir. 2014) (“North Carolina asserts goals of electoral integrity and fraud prevention. But nothing in the district court’s portrayal of the facts suggests that those are anything other than merely imaginable.”); Obama for Am. v. Husted, 697 F.3d 423, 433S34 (6th Cir. 2012) (holding voting regulation was not justified by “vague interest[s]” when the state had submitted “no evidence” to 40 justify its invocation of the interests); cf. Cal. Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U.S. 567, 584 (2000) (explaining that the determination of whether the “four asserted state interests—promoting fairness, affording voters greater choice, increasing voter participation, and protecting privacy—are . . . compelling . . . is not to be made in the abstract, by asking whether fairness, privacy, etc., are highly significant values; but rather by asking whether the aspect of fairness, privacy, etc., addressed by the law at issue is highly significant”). Finally, in addition to Justice Stevens’s consideration of the “facial attack on the validity of the entire statute” in Crawford based on “the statute’s broad application to all Indiana voters,” 553 U.S. at 189, 202–03, he also parsed the burden imposed on specific categories of voters: “elderly persons born out of State, who may have difficulty obtaining a birth certificate; persons who because of economic or other personal limitations may find it difficult either to secure a copy of their birth certificate or to assemble the other required documentation to obtain a state-issued identification; homeless persons; and persons with a religious objection to being photographed,” id. at 199 (footnote omitted). But the record evidence concerning the burdens imposed on these voters was once again lackluster: “on the basis of the evidence in the record it is not possible to quantify either the magnitude of the burden on this narrow class of voters or the portion of the burden imposed on them that is fully justified.” Id. at 200. “[T]he evidence 41 in the record d[id] not provide [the Court] with the number of registered voters without photo identification,” “the deposition evidence presented in the District Court d[id] not provide any concrete evidence of the burden imposed on voters who currently lack photo identification,” and the “record sa[id] virtually nothing about the difficulties faced by either indigent voters or voters with religious objections to being photographed.” Id. at 200S01. Furthermore, the Court noted that the unique burdens on these classes of individuals would be mitigated by a provision in the Indiana law that allowed certain “voters without photo identification [to] cast provisional ballots that will ultimately be counted.” Id. at 199. 5 In sum, Crawford teaches that we must balance any burden on the right to vote imposed by the DPOC requirement against the government’s asserted interests as justifications for imposing that burden. We must apply the Anderson- 5 Justice Scalia criticized the “lead opinion” for this focus on the burden imposed on specific populations. 553 U.S. at 204S05. In his view, traditional equal-protection principles required evaluating the burden the voter-identification requirement imposed on all voters, even if different populations felt the impacts of that single burden differently. Id. at 205; see also id. at 206 (arguing that, in its prior opinions, “when [the Court] began to grapple with the magnitude of burdens, [it] did so categorically and did not consider the peculiar circumstances of individual voters or candidates”). He particularly thought Justice Stevens’s focus on the requirement’s impact on the poor, disabled, and elderly was problematic because these are not suspect classifications. Id. at 207. He would have avoided “[t]he lead opinion’s record-based resolution” and instead held that “[t]he burden of acquiring, possessing, and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe.” Id. at 208S09. 42 Burdick balancing test flexibly, i.e., “the rigorousness of our inquiry into the propriety of [the DPOC requirement] depends upon the extent to which [it] burdens” voters’ rights. Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434. And, while we are to evaluate “the statute’s broad application to all . . . voters” to determine the magnitude of the burden, Crawford, 553 U.S. at 202–03 (plurality opinion of Stevens, J.), we may nevertheless specifically consider the “limited number of persons” on whom “[t]he burdens that are relevant to the issue before us” will be “somewhat heavier,” id. at 198S99 (plurality opinion of Stevens, J.); see also Harper, 383 U.S. at 668 (holding poll tax facially unconstitutional while identifying the specifically pernicious effect such a tax has on those unable to pay it); Nathaniel Persily, Fig Leaves and Tea Leaves in the Supreme Court’s Recent Election Law Decisions, 2008 S UP . C T . R EV . 89, 101 (2008) (“Voting laws that are unconstitutional on their face are usually so because a minority (even a nonsuspect one) is disadvantaged.”).