Editor’s Note: Law Week Colorado edits court opinion summaries for style and, when necessary, length.
To vote by mail in Kansas, a voter ordinarily must request a mail ballot by sending an application to the county election office.
VoteAmerica and the Voter Participation Center challenged, on First Amendment grounds, Kansas restrictions on private parties partially filling out mail-ballot applications before sending them to registered voters.
VoteAmerica brought freedom-of-speech and freedom-of-association claims, seeking an injunction to prevent Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and Johnson County District Attorney Stephen Howe from enforcing the law.
According to the opinion, after a bench trial based on largely stipulated facts, and after applying strict scrutiny to the law, the district court judged in favor of VoteAmerica on both claims, enjoining the law’s enforcement.
The chief issue on appeal, according to the opinion, is the level of scrutiny that should be applied in reviewing the freedom-of-speech challenge to Kansas’ statutory restrictions on the mailing of prefilled mail-ballot applications.
The 10th Circuit Court of appeals concluded that the restrictions should be analyzed under intermediate scrutiny. It held that the freedom-of-speech claim must be reconsidered by the district court, but that the freedom-of-association claim lacked merit and must be rejected.
The 10th Circuit reversed and remanded.
Good v. Department of Education
After finding errors on his credit report, Jeffrey Good sued, inter alia, the U.S. Department of Education and the Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas ruled in favor of the DOE and MOHELA and dismissed Good’s claims against them. Specifically, the district court granted the DOE’s motion to dismiss because FCRA didn’t waive the U.S. government’s sovereign immunity from suit, so the DOE was entitled to sovereign immunity.
The district court granted MOHELA’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, concluding that MOHELA was an arm of the state of Missouri and entitled to share in Missouri’s 11th Amendment immunity from suit.
Good appealed. With respect to the DOE, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the dismissal of claims must be reversed in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Department of Agriculture Rural Development Rural Housing Service v. Kirtz, which both parties agreed on.
The question of whether MOHELA is an arm of the state of Missouri entitled to immunity from suit, according to the opinion, is an issue that has divided the courts that have addressed it. The 10th Circuit concluded that MOHELA is not an arm of the state entitled to 11th Amendment immunity.
The 10th Circuit reversed and remanded.