(CN) — A Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Friday affirmed a lower court ruling that struck down Michigan lawmakers’ attempt to kill voter-backed election law reforms.
A three-judge appellate panel found the state senators and representatives, all Republicans, lacked standing to sue over the election law changes, despite their assertion that the reform process violated the U.S. Constitution.
“In Michigan, as in seventeen other states, citizens may use ballot initiatives to amend the State’s Constitution. Two Michigan state senators and nine state representatives argue that, if citizens use the initiative to regulate federal elections, that process
violates the elections clause of the U.S. Constitution. Because they lack standing to bring the lawsuit, we affirm the district court’s dismissal,” Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in the unanimous 10-page opinion.
The pair of state constitutional amendments at issue, passed in 2018 and 2022, changed Michigan election laws by ensuring a right to a secret ballot, ensuring ballot access for overseas and military voters, adding straight-ticket voting and making it easier for citizens to vote. The 2018 amendment passed with 67% of the vote and the 2022 amendment got 60%.
The Republican lawmakers sued Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, along with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the state’s elections director Jonathan Brater, over the changes in September 2023.
They argued the amendments circumvented the elections clause by “usurping” the state legislature’s power to regulate federal election protocols. As part of their case, they sought a court declaration that the amendments “have no legal effect on the state legislators enacting laws, subject to the governor’s veto power, to regulate times, places and manner of federal elections.”
The U.S. District Court of Western Michigan, however, concluded this past April that the lawmakers hadn’t demonstrated any injury that could give them standing to sue. The lawmakers’ attorney Erick Kaardal questioned the lower court’s conclusion during oral arguments earlier this month, after the lawmakers appealed their loss. Kaardal further argued that dismissal for lack of standing skirted the substantive constitutional issues raised by the lawmakers’ suit.
“The consequence of the lower court decision is that the merits of an election clause legislator usurpation claim has not been adjudicated,” Kaardal told the Sixth Circuit appellate panel.
The panel waved that argument away in its Friday opinion by pointing out the lawmakers were just that — individual lawmakers, not the lawmaking institution itself.
“The argument fails on its own terms … The Michigan Constitution vests the legislative power in a ‘senate’ and ‘house of representatives,’ not individuals,” Sutton wrote.
Sutton also said the court was wary of allowing “political losers” to get a judicial mulligan on legal changes they opposed.
“When it comes to individual legislators, there seem to be at least two special concerns,” Sutton wrote. “One is that the legislators already have ‘ample legislative power’ to remedy injuries as representatives. The other is that the federal courts remain wary of allowing political losers to sidestep their colleagues and run ‘to a sympathetic court for a do-over.’”
Finally, Sutton noted that the plaintiff lawmakers do not represent the majority of the Michigan legislature, or even their own party. Since 2018 and 2022, Sutton found, the state legislature has already enacted laws that accommodated for the respective election reforms. These include changes to how qualified electors apply for state IDs, and a 2023 state law requiring “at least one absent voter ballot drop box” for every 15,000 registered electors in each Michigan city and township.
“In the last analysis, this case simply is not one in which the citizen petitions ‘completely nullify’ the legislators’ votes. Unable to fit this lawsuit into the narrow exception for such institutional injuries, the claimants cannot turn to the federal courts to transform their legislative defeat into a judicial victory,” Sutton concluded.
The chief judge was joined in his opinion by U.S. Circuit Judges John Bush and Eric Murphy, both Donald Trump appointees.