Opinion ID: 4529763
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Joint Fish and Bednasek Bench Trial

Text: On remand, the district court consolidated Fish—the statutory case—with Bednasek—the constitutional case—for trial. We summarize the district court’s factual findings, its legal conclusions in both cases, and the remedies it imposed.
In addition to the above evidence about individual plaintiffs with suspended or canceled applications, the plaintiffs put forward statistical evidence about the overall number of suspended applications. The district court found that, before the preliminary injunction in Fish was issued, there were 14,770 individuals who had applied to vote but whose applications were suspended for failure to provide 14 DPOC. Of these, 5,655 were motor-voter applicants. Another 16,319 individuals had their applications canceled for failure to provide DPOC. Of these, 11,147 were motor-voter applicants. That “amount[ed] to 31,089 total applicants who were denied registration for failure to provide DPOC.” Aplt.’s App., Vol. 47, at 11447. Other numbers and expert testimony demonstrated that “[c]anceled or suspended applicants represented 12.4% of new voter registrations between January 1, 2013[,] and December 11, 2015.” Id. at 11448. An expert opined that the total number of applicants with suspended or canceled applications would have increased but for the injunction, “in part because voter registration activity typically increases in the months leading up to a presidential election.” Id. at 11449. However, while there was significant evidence that would-be voters had their applications suspended and canceled by the DPOC requirement, the court acknowledged that “[t]here was little admissible evidence presented at trial about the rate of DPOC possession by suspended and canceled applicants.” Id. at 11457. The district court also made factual findings about the number of noncitizens who had applied to register to vote. The district court found that, “at most, 67 noncitizens registered or attempted to register in Kansas over the last 19 years.” Id. at 11519. Of these, “there [were] only 39 confirmed noncitizens who successfully registered to vote between 1999 and 2013 when the DPOC law 15 became effective.” Id. at 11508. Those 39 individuals represented 0.002% of all registered voters in Kansas as of January 1, 2013—the date the DPOC requirement went into effect. Id. And specifically as to those applications that were suspended, the court found that the estimated number of suspended applications that belonged to noncitizens was “statistically indistinguishable from zero,” while “more than 99% of the individuals” whose voter-registration applications were suspended were citizens who would have been able to vote but for the DPOC requirement. Id. at 11491S92; see id. at 11481. Moreover, even those few instances of noncitizens attempting to register to vote may be explained by “administrative anomalies.” Id. at 11520. For example, Kansas’s voterregistration database included 100 individuals with purported birth dates in the 19th century and 400 individuals with purported birth dates after their date of voter registration. While the district court only found these 39 instances of noncitizen registration, the Secretary presented several anecdotes regarding noncitizens who purportedly attempted to register to vote. There was evidence that some noncitizens with temporary driver’s licenses had been registered to vote and that one citizen told Kansas officials that she had voted before becoming a citizen. The Secretary also identified an incident, summarized in a letter in the record, where employees of a hog farm “were transported to [a county] office by their 16 employer to register to vote” even though a county clerk stated that “some of these employees felt they were pressured to register even though they may not be legal.” Id., Vol. 30, at 7668 (Letter from Seward Cty. Clerk to Kan. S. Ethics & Elections Comm., dated Mar. 3, 2011). In its preliminary injunction analysis, the district court had concluded that the evidence submitted about this incident was “insufficient to show that noncitizens actually voted.” Id., Vol. 4, at 867 (Mem. & Order, filed May 17, 2016). While the Secretary returns to these examples in this court, it is unclear how they relate to the 39 instances of noncitizen registration that the district court identified. Apart from the 39 confirmed instances of noncitizen registration, Kansas presented expert testimony on statistical estimates of noncitizen registration and on noncitizen registration outside Kansas. But the district court either gave little weight or entirely rejected Kansas’s expert testimony on these topics. The court found that one expert’s testimony contained “myriad misleading statements” and “preordained opinions.” Id., Vol. 47, at 11474; see id. at 11476 (“The record is replete with further evidence of [the expert]’s bias.”). The court also concluded that studies offered by a different expert were “confusing, inconsistent, and methodologically flawed.” Id. at 11491. “[L]ooking beyond Kansas, [the Secretary’s] evidence of noncitizen registration at trial was weak.” Id. at 11519. The district court explained at length why it excluded large portions of the 17 Secretary’s expert testimony on statistical estimates of noncitizen registration in Kansas and found much of the remaining testimony unpersuasive. Id. (explaining that one of the Secretary’s experts was “credibly dismantled” by the architect of the survey upon which the expert had relied). b. Legal Conclusions in Bednasek v. Schwab, No. 18-3134 In Bednasek, the court carefully evaluated these facts under the equalprotection rubric established by the Supreme Court’s opinion in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, supra. As discussed at length below, Crawford instructs that we are to examine the burden that a state law places on the right to vote and then weigh the government’s asserted interests for imposing that law against that burden. Guided by Crawford, the district court here balanced the burdens imposed by the DPOC requirement against the state’s interests in preventing noncitizen voter registration, maintaining accurate voter rolls, and maintaining confidence in elections. The court concluded that “the magnitude of potentially disenfranchised voters impacted by the DPOC law and its enforcement scheme cannot be justified by the scant evidence of noncitizen voter fraud before and after the law was passed, by the need to ensure the voter rolls are accurate, or by the State’s interest in promoting public confidence in elections.” Aplt.’s App., Vol. 47, at 11526. 18 c. Legal Conclusions in Fish v. Schwab, No. 18-3133 In Fish, the court held that the preemption framework established in Fish I was the law of the case. Applying that framework and considering the evidence summarized above, the court concluded that there was “no credible evidence that a substantial number of noncitizens registered to vote under the attestation regime.” Id. at 11507. Instead, it found that the “evidence of a small number of noncitizen registrations in Kansas . . . is largely explained by administrative error, confusion, [and] mistake.” Id. at 11509. The court concluded that “[the Secretary] ha[d] failed to rebut the presumption that the attestation clause meets the minimum information principle in § 5 of the NVRA, and [it] therefore order[ed] judgment in favor of [the Fish] Plaintiffs.” Id. at 11515. d. Remedies Finding that the DPOC requirement violated the Equal Protection Clause and section 5 of the NVRA, the court ordered the Secretary “not [to] enforce the DPOC law and accompanying regulation against voter registration applicants in Kansas.” Id. at 11529. The court also ordered various specific forms of relief not at issue here, e.g., ordering the Secretary to update websites and provide applicants with certificates of registration. Id. at 11530. The Secretary timely appealed. 19