Opinion ID: 4566008
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Burden

Text: We see no reason to depart from our previous holding that Ohio’s ballot-access restrictions impose, at most, only an intermediate burden on plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights, even during COVID-19.6 Id. at 810–811. If anything, the interim between our stay order and now has reinforced our holding. The federal circuit tide has turned against Plaintiffs. The Eighth Circuit, for instance, held that Arkansas’s “in-person signature requirement, while implicating the First Amendment, imposes less-than-severe burdens on the plaintiffs’ rights and survives the applicable lesser scrutiny.” Miller v. Thurston, 967 F.3d 727, 741 (8th Cir. 2020); see also Libertarian Party of Pa. v. Governor of Pa., 813 F. App’x 834, 835 (3d Cir. 2020) (mem.) (holding that Pennsylvania’s ballot-access law, which includes a signature requirement, “survives intermediate scrutiny because it serves the Commonwealth’s legitimate and sufficiently important interests in ‘avoiding ballot clustering, ensuring viable candidates, and the orderly and efficient administration of elections.’”). And in Morgan v. White, the Seventh Circuit said that if Illinois wanted to just skip referenda for the year, “there is no federal problem”: “Illinois may decide for itself whether a pandemic is a good time to be soliciting signatures on the streets in order to add referenda to a ballot.” 964 F.3d 649, 652 (7th Cir. 2020). And in addition, the Supreme Court stayed two injunctions against state enforcement of ballot access restrictions. Little v. Reclaim Idaho, --- S. Ct. ---, No. 20A18, 2020 WL 4360897 (2020); Clarno v. People Not Politicians, --- S. Ct. ----, No. 20A21, 2020 WL 4589742 (2020). And the Court left our previous ruling in place. Thompson, --- S. Ct. ----, 2020 WL 3456705 (2020). 6 Plaintiffs argue that our stay order “carries limited weight.” (Appellees’ Br. at 24 n.29.) We don’t need to decide the precedential weight to give to that order. But it’s worth noting that we’ve since relied on it as “binding precedent.” Hawkins v. DeWine, 968 F.3d 603, 604 (6th Cir. 2020). 6 No. 20-3526, Thompson v. DeWine Even without those developments, Plaintiffs still faced an uphill battle. We noted in our stay order that “[a]t bottom, a severe burden excludes or virtually excludes electors or initiatives from the ballot.” 959 F.3d at 809. But Ohio’s ballot access laws don’t do that. Id. Instead, all throughout the pandemic, “Ohio specifically exempted conduct protected by the First Amendment from its stay-at-home orders.” Id. This included gathering signatures for petitions.7 Even if that was unclear at first, Ohio made it clear by April 30—which gave Plaintiffs months to gather signatures. Ohio Dep’t of Health, Director’s Order that Reopens Businesses, with Exceptions, and Continues a Stay Healthy and Safe at Home Order ¶ 4 (April 30, 2020). And even if prospective signatories were deciding to stay home or avoid strangers—thus reducing Plaintiffs’ opportunities to interact with them—we don’t attribute those decisions to Ohio. “[W]e must remember, First Amendment violations require state action.” Thompson, 959 F.3d at 810. So “Plaintiffs’ burden is less than severe” because Ohio hasn’t excluded or virtually excluded them from the ballot. Id.; see Hawkins v. DeWine, 968 F.3d 603, 607 (6th Cir. 2020) Plaintiffs argue that “total exclusion” from the ballot isn’t essential for finding a severe burden. (Appellees’ Br. at 25.) But the cases Plaintiffs cite don’t support their theory. For instance, they rely on our recent decision in Esshaki v. Whitmer to claim that the “combined effect” of strictly enforced ballot access laws and stay-at-home orders can create a severe burden. See 813 F. App’x 170, 171 (6th Cir. 2020). This language, they say, means that “total exclusion” isn’t necessary to make out a severe burden. And for extra support they cite SawariMedia, LLC v. 7 Plaintiffs argue that Ohio’s First Amendment exception to its stay-at-home orders was “too vague to alleviate the burden on Thompson.” (Appellees’ Br. at 31.) We confronted that argument head on in Hawkins and rejected it. Hawkins, 968 F.3d at 607 (“[T]he orders explicitly exempt First Amendment protected speech, and it is well-established that the act of collecting signatures for ballot access falls under that ambit.”). 7 No. 20-3526, Thompson v. DeWine Whitmer, where “neither this court, nor the district court applied a ‘total exclusion’ test to find severe burden.” (Appellees’ Br. at 28); see 963 F.3d 595 (6th Cir. 2020). True, we held in Esshaki that “the combination of [Michigan’s] strict enforcement of the ballot-access provisions and the Stay-at-Home Orders imposed a severe burden on the plaintiffs’ ballot access.” 813 F. App’x at 171. But Plaintiffs omit why we held that way. We later clarified: “We held that there was a severe burden because Michigan’s Stay-at-Home Order remained in effect through the deadline to submit ballot-access petitions, effectively excluding all candidates who had not already satisfied the signature requirements (and predicted a shutdown).” Kishore, -- - F.3d ----, 2020 WL 4932749, at  (emphasis added). And Kishore’s explanation of why we found a severe burden in Esshaki applies with equal force to SawariMedia. The restrictions at issue there were “identical” to those in Esshaki. SawariaMedia, LLC, 963 F.3d at 597. So in finding a severe burden in both Esshaki and SawariMedia, we relied on the fact that Michigan’s restrictions “effectively excluded” the plaintiffs from ballot access. Plaintiffs also cite Libertarian Party of Ky. v. Grimes. That case noted that “the ‘combined effect’ of ballot-access restrictions can pose a severe burden.” 835 F.3d 570, 575 (6th Cir. 2016). Fair enough. But again, Plaintiffs read the case too narrowly. In fact, Libertarian Party of Ky. explicitly stated—multiple times, at that—that the ballot access restrictions at issue couldn’t be a severe burden because they didn’t “constitute exclusion or virtual exclusion.” Id. at 575; see id. at 574 (“The hallmark of a severe burden is exclusion or virtual exclusion from the ballot.”). Since our stay order, we’ve already had the chance to take another look at the burden Ohio’s ballot access regulations impose. See Hawkins, 968 F.3d at 604; see also Kishore, --- F.3d ----, 2020 WL 4932749, at . Hawkins involved a challenge to Ohio’s requirements for running for President of the United States as an independent, which are virtually identical to those here. 8 No. 20-3526, Thompson v. DeWine 968 F.3d at 604 (noting that Ohio requires independent presidential candidates to file “a nominating petition with no fewer than 5,000 signatures,” which must be fixed in ink and witnessed by the circulator). Relying on our Thompson stay order, we held that “the burden imposed on Plaintiffs by Ohio’s ballot-access statutes—in light of the state’s response to the pandemic—is an intermediate one.” Id. at 607. And in Kishore, we applied intermediate scrutiny to Michigan ballot access regulations that were “comparable to the burdens imposed upon the plaintiffs in Thompson and Hawkins.” --- F.3d ----, 2020 WL 4932749, at . To be sure, it may be harder for Plaintiffs to obtain signatures given the conditions. But “just because procuring signatures is now harder … doesn’t mean that Plaintiffs are excluded from the ballot.” Thompson, 959 F.3d at 810. The burden Plaintiffs face here is thus an intermediate one. That means we next weigh it against the interests Ohio puts forward to justify its regulations.