Fish v. Kobach (2:16-cv-02105) | |
---|---|
Court | United States District Court for the District of Kansas |
Full case name | Steven Wayne Fish, Ralph Ortiz, Donna Bucci, Charles Stricker, Thomas J. Boynton and Douglas Hutchinson on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, v. Kris Kobach, in his official capacity as Secretary of State for the State of Kansas; and Nick Jordan, in his official capacity as Secretary of Revenue for the State of Kansas, Defendants, class action complaint [1] |
Decided | 2018-06-18 |
Defendants | Kris Kobach in his official capacity as Secretary of State of Kansas; and Nick Jordan, in his official capacity as Secretary of Revenue for the State of Kansas |
Counsel for plaintiffs | American Civil Liberties Union |
Plaintiffs | Steven Wayne Fish, Ralph Ortiz, Donna Bucci, Charles Stricker, Thomas J. Boynton and Douglas Hutchinson on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated |
Court membership | |
Judge sitting | Julie A. Robinson [2] [3] |
Fish v. Kobach (officially known since January 19, 2019 as Fish v. Schwab) was a 2018 bench trial in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas in which five Kansas residents, the ACLU and the League of Women Voters contested the legality of the Documentary Proof of Citizenship (DPOC) requirement of the Kansas Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act, which was enacted in 2011 and took effect in 2013.
Kris Kobach, then-Kansas Secretary of State, attempted to claim these procedures were needed to protect the nation from a supposedly massive problem of vote fraud by people not legally allowed to do so, including 11.3 percent of non-citizens residing in the US amounting to some 3.2 million votes in 2016. [4] The plaintiffs in this case claimed there was no evidence to support Kobach's allegations and that tens of thousands of American citizens were unnecessarily removed from voter rolls as a result of the law. [3]
Trial hearings ran from March 6 to 19, 2018, with a contempt hearing for Kobach on March 20 with Chief District Judge Julie A. Robinson presiding. Robinson was appointed to the District court by President George W. Bush in 2001. On May 18 Judge Robinson ruled Kobach in contempt. Final rulings were issued June 18 and 19, 2018. In brief, Judge Robinson found that the defense had presented no credible evidence of the massive problem claimed and instead had erected substantial obstacles to voter registration by people eligible to vote per the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. [5] She further found defendant Kobach in contempt of court. [6] The verdict was unanimously upheld upon appeal in 2020. [7]
Judge Robinson further generally found the plaintiff's expert witnesses credible while expert witnesses for the defense were often found to be not credible.
Kris Kobach hired Jesse Richman as a paid expert witness in 2018 for Fish v. Kobach. ProPublica summarized Judge Julie Robinson's assessment of Richman's conclusions as "'confusing, inconsistent and methodologically flawed,' and adding that they were 'credibly dismantled' by Ansolabehere. She labeled elements of Richman’s testimony 'disingenuous' and 'misleading,' and stated that she gave his research 'no weight' in her decision." [20]
Richard Hasen called parts of Richman's testimony "social science at its worst." [21]
Hans von Spakovsky, a member of Trump's voter fraud commission, was another expert witness for Kobach whose testimony ProPublica described as having been 'lacerated' by Judge Julie Robinson. She accused him of unsupported and misleading statements as well as false assertions. She said his opinions were based on preconceived beliefs related to his advocacy. [22] "Defendant's expert Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, 'a think tank whose mission [is to] formulate and promote conservative public policies. ... [He] cited a U.S. GAO study for the proposition that the GAO 'found that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 individuals called for jury duty from voter registration roles over a two-year period in just one U.S. district court were not U.S. citizens.' On cross-examination, however, he acknowledged that he omitted the following facts: the GAO study contained information on a total of 8 district courts; 4 of the 8 reported that there was not a single non-citizen who had been called for jury duty; and the 3 remaining district courts reported that less than 1% of those called for jury duty from voter rolls were noncitizens. Therefore, his report misleadingly described the only district court with the highest percentage of people reporting that they were noncitizens, while omitting mention of the 7 other courts described in the GAO report, including 4 that had no incidents of noncitizens on the rolls. [23] ... While [Mr. von Spakovsky's] lack of academic background is not fatal to his credibility ...., his clear agenda and misleading statements ... render his opinions unpersuasive."
Richard Hasen said Spakovsky had a serious credibility problem with a history of not retracting false claims. [21]
"In contrast, Plaintiffs offered Dr. Lorraine Minnite, an objective expert witness, who provided compelling testimony about Defendant's claims of noncitizen registration. Dr. Minnite ... has extensively researched and studied the incidence and effect of voter fraud in American elections. Her published research on the topic spans over a decade and includes her full-length, peer-reviewed book, The Myth of Voter Fraud, for which Dr. Minnite has received grants and professional distinctions, and numerous articles and chapters in edited volumes. ... Notably, Dr. Minnite testified that when she began researching the issue of voter fraud, ..., she began with a 'blank slate' about the conclusions she would ultimately draw from the research. ... Although she admits that noncitizen registration and voting does at times occur, Dr. Minnite testified that there is no empirical evidence to support Defendant's claims in this case that noncitizen registration and voting in Kansas are largescale problems. ... [M]any of these cases reflect isolated incidents of avoidable administrative errors ... and / or misunderstanding on the part of applicants. ... For example, 100 individuals in ELVIS [the Kansas Election Voter Information System] have birth dates in the 1800s, indicating that they are older than 118. And 400 individuals have birth dates after their date of registration, indicating they registered to vote before they were born." [24]
During the first three days of the trial, Robinson repeatedly warned Kobach about trying to introduce evidence that had not been shared with the plaintiffs during discovery. Kobach complained that the discussions "are relying on numbers that are stale". After three days, Robinson said, "We're not going to have a trial by ambush here... You're stuck with what you provided to [the plaintiffs] by the deadline". [25]
Secretary Kobach had been fined $1,000 in 2017 for violating previous court orders in this case. In the March 20, 2018, contempt hearing Judge Julie Robinson was visibly agitated when it was revealed that he had still not complied with her 2016 court orders in two specific ways: [26] [27]
In the March 2018 hearings, Kobach claimed he had given verbal instructions to that effect but acknowledged that some county election offices may not have complied with this ruling. Robinson said that Kobach had assured her in telephone hearings that he had instructed his office to order county election officials to mail the postcards to all voters covered by her order. Kobach claimed she had not put that requirement in writing. She replied, "Why would I order something in writing that you've told me is being taken care of? ... (As an officer of the court) you are under an ethical obligation to tell me the truth.'" [26] [27]
On April 18, 2018, Judge Robinson ruled Kobach in contempt. She did not fine him but did order him to pay court costs, including attorney fees for the American Civil Liberties Union, which sought the contempt ruling. Moriah Day, a spokeswoman for Kobach's campaign for governor, said the secretary of state's office would appeal the decision and would have no other comment. [29] (Governor Jeff Coyler, who lost to Kobach in the 2018 Republican primary for Governor, said Kobach should be required to personally pay those fees that had been awarded. Secretary Kobach's office said that Kobach is shielded from any such liability.) [30]
On June 18 and 19, 2018, Judge Robinson published 118 pages of "Findings of fact and conclusions of law" in this case. In broad strokes, she sided with the plaintiffs on most of the major points in question and with the defense on a few relatively minor points.
Most importantly, "the Court finds in favor of the Plaintiffs in the Fish case," establishing that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (the "motor voter" act) takes precedence over the Kansas DPOC requirements. In addition, the "Court further finds in favor of Plaintiff Bednasek in his constitutional challenge", concluding that the DPOC violated the fourteenth amendment. [5] (Bednasek v. Kobach started as a separate case that was later joined to Fish v. Kobach, because of the similarities of the issues involved.)
"Further, the Court imposes specific compliance measures given the Defendant's history of non-compliance with this Court's orders. And the Court imposes sanctions responsive to Defendant's repeated and flagrant violations of discovery and disclosure rules." [31] In particular, "Defendant shall strictly comply with the directives in this Order meant to enforce the Court's permanent injunction of the DPOC law and K.A.R. sec. 7-23-15. It is further ordered that Defendant shall attend 6 hours [of continuing legal education (CLE) on civil rules of procedure or evidence] in addition to any other CLE education required by his law license for the 2018-2019 reporting year." [32]
In addition to findings regarding the witness testimony above:
Defendant Nick Jordan, Kansas Secretary of Revenue, was dismissed from the case. [33]
Mr. Fish's complaint was declared moot, because "in September or October 2016, he relocated within Douglas County and changed his address with the DOV in person. ... He is now registered to vote ... not due to the Court's preliminary injunction, but his voluntary action of reapplying to register to vote at which time he provided DPOC." [34]
"The voting rate among purported noncitizen registrations on [a Kansas temporary driver license] match list is around 1%, whereas the voting rate among registrants in Kansas more generally is around 70%." [24]
Beyond noting that only about 1% of registrants purported to be noncitizens actually voted, the court found that "31,089 total applicants ... were denied registration for failure to provide DPOC, ... [which] represented 12.4% of new voter registrations between January 1, 2013 and December 11, 2015", the cutoff date for confidential ELVIS data provided to plaintiff's expert witness, Dr. Michael McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida and a leading scholar on American elections, voter registration, and factors affecting voter behavior and turnout. [35]
By comparison, "Defendant already has prosecutorial authority over Kansas election crimes. Yet, since obtaining this authority, and despite claiming to have located 129 instances of noncitizen registration in Kansas, Defendant has filed zero criminal complaints against noncitizens for registering to vote." [36] But "looking closely at those [129] records reduces that number to 67 at most. Even these 67 instances are a liberal estimate because it includes attempted registrations after the DPOC law was passed, a larger universe than what the Tenth Circuit asked the Court to evaluate. Only 39 successfully registered to vote. ... And several of the individual records of those who registered or attempted to register show errors on the part of State employees, and/or confusion on the part of applicants." Moreover, those 39 represent only "0.002% of all registered voters in Kansas as of January 1, 2013 (1,762,330). Defendant Kobach "insists that [published numbers of noncitizens voting] are just 'the tip of the iceberg.' This trial was his opportunity to produce credible evidence of that iceberg, but he failed to do so. ... Instead, the Court draws the more obvious conclusion that there is no iceberg; only an icicle, largely created by confusion and administrative error." [37]
The court found that "31,089 total applicants ... were denied registration for failure to provide DPOC, ... [which] represented 12.4% of new voter registrations between January 1, 2013 and December 11, 2015". [35] Meanwhile, Kansas Secretary of State Kobach, who claimed this was a massive problem, provided evidence of only 39 cases of non-citizens having registered to vote in Kansas, which represented only "0.002% of all registered voters". [37]
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is an American civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.
Voter caging is a colloquial term used in the United States referring to a campaign activity used to remove, or attempt to remove, targeted voters from official lists of registered voters. It occurs when a non-governmental organization, such as a political party or a campaign, sends first-class mail to registered voters, in order to compile a so-called "challenge list" of the names of those whose letters are returned undelivered. The fact that the mail was returned as undeliverable may be seen as either proof, or strong evidence of, the person no longer residing at the address on their voter registration. The challenge list is presented to election officials with the suggestion that the officials should purge these names from the voter registration rolls or to challenge voters' eligibility to vote on the grounds that the voters no longer reside at their registered addresses.
Kris William Kobach is an American lawyer and politician who has served as the attorney general of Kansas since 2023. He previously served as the 31st secretary of state of Kansas from 2011 to 2019.
Hans Anatol von Spakovsky is an American attorney and a former member of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). He is the manager of The Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He is an advocate for stricter voting laws. He has been described as playing an influential role in making concern about voter fraud mainstream in the Republican Party.
Derek Larkin Schmidt is an American lawyer and politician who served as the Kansas Attorney General from 2011 to 2023. A Republican, Schmidt was first elected to office serving in the Kansas Senate, where he represented the 15th district from 2001 to 2011, and served as Agriculture Committee chairman and Senate majority leader. Schmidt became the state attorney general in 2011, after he defeated incumbent Democrat Stephen Six.
Julie Ann Robinson is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Kansas.
Steve CarMichael Jones is a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia and a former Georgia Superior Court judge.
Voter ID laws in the United States are laws that require a person to provide some form of official identification before they are permitted to register to vote, receive a ballot for an election, or to actually vote in elections in the United States.
Same-sex marriage became legal in Kansas following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015, which found the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples unconstitutional. By June 30, all 31 judicial districts and all 105 Kansas counties were issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples or had agreed to do so. Kansas state agencies initially delayed recognition of same-sex marriages for purposes including but not limited to changing names, ascribing health benefits and filing joint tax returns, but began doing so on July 6.
Voter suppression in the United States consists of various legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible citizens from exercising their right to vote. Such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election. Voter suppression has historically been used for racial, economic, gender, age and disability discrimination. After the American Civil War, all African-American men were granted voting rights, but poll taxes or language tests were used to limit and suppress the ability to register or cast a ballot. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 improved voting access. Since the beginning of voter suppression efforts, proponents of these laws have cited concerns over electoral integrity as a justification for various restrictions and requirements, while opponents argue that these constitute bad faith given the lack of voter fraud evidence in the United States.
In the United States, electoral fraud, or voter fraud, involves illegal voting in or manipulation of United States elections. Types of fraud include voter impersonation or in-person voter fraud, mail-in or absentee ballot fraud, illegal voting by noncitizens, and double voting. The United States government defines voter or ballot fraud as one of three broad categories of federal election crimes, the other two being campaign finance crimes and civil rights violations.
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, also called the Voter Fraud Commission, was a Presidential Commission established by Donald Trump that ran from May 11, 2017, to January 3, 2018. The Trump administration said the commission would review claims of voter fraud, improper registration, and voter suppression. The establishment of the commission followed Trump's false claim that millions of illegal immigrants had voted in the 2016 presidential election, costing him the popular vote. Vice President Mike Pence was chosen as chair of the commission and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was its vice chair and day-to-day administrator.
American Civil Liberties Union v. Trump and Pence, No. 1:17-cv-01351, is a case pending before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs, the watchdog group American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges that the defendants, President Donald Trump and the Vice President Michael Pence, are in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act by establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity for the purpose of supporting the President's "claim that he won the popular vote in the 2016 election—once millions of supposedly illegal votes are subtracted from the count."
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is an American conservative legal group based in Alexandria, Virginia, which is known for suing states and local governments to purge voters from election rolls. The nonprofit was constituted in 2012.
Jennifer Elise Nashold is an American attorney, currently serving as a judge of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals. She was elected in 2019.
McDonough v. Smith, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case from the October 2018 term. In a 6–3 ruling, the Court held that the 3-year statute of limitations for a fabrication of evidence civil lawsuit under section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act begins to run when the criminal case ends in the plaintiff's favor.
Before Election Day of the 2020 United States presidential election, lawsuits related to the voting process were filed in various states. Many of these lawsuits were related to measures taken by state legislatures and election officials in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In direct response to election changes related to the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia; the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign launched numerous civil lawsuits contesting the election processes of Georgia. All of these were either dismissed or dropped.
Allen v. Milligan, 599 U. S. 1 (2023), is a United States Supreme Court case related to redistricting under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). The appellees and respondents argued that Alabama's congressional districts discriminated against African-American voters. The Court ruled 5–4 that Alabama's districts likely violated the VRA, maintained an injunction that required Alabama to create an additional majority-minority district.
Jesse Richman is an associate professor of political science and geography at Old Dominion University. His research has focused on legislative politics, public opinion, electoral politics, and intellectual property. He is known for his 2014 study with David Earnest about illegal non-citizen voting, which was widely rejected by the broader academic community and was notably misused by Donald Trump and the election denial movement in the United States to justify false claims of widespread fraud. Richman's expert testimony on noncitizen voting in Fish v. Kobach was widely criticized while his expert testimony in Arizona received mixed reviews.
Dale Ho, director for the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union said the case is about what national standards the U.S. will have for voter registration. "It is also a case about this false narrative of noncitizens participating in elections — which Kobach has said for years has been happening in large amounts — and now we are going to see his evidence ... [Kobach's] evidence is going to be put on the stand in open court for a federal judge to rule on, and I think the public will finally get to see how little evidence he actually has."
Kobach cited a highly disputed study from Richman based on 2014 voter data and asserted that self-reported noncitizens vote at a rate of 11.3 percent. "If we apply that number to the current presidential election … you'd have 3.2 million aliens voted in the presidential election, and that far exceeds the current popular vote margin between President-elect Trump and Secretary Clinton", Kobach said in 2016.
April 18, 2011. Today Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed the Kansas Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act into law. ... Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach [said,] "No other state in the union does as much to secure the integrity of the voting process." Kobach unveiled HB 2067 (the SAFE Act) ... . While Republicans voted almost unanimously for the SAFE Act, 75% of Senate Democrats and 70% of House Democrats also voted for the SAFE Act. The core provisions of the SAFE Act are these: (1) newly-registered Kansas voters must prove U.S. citizenship when registering to vote; (2) voters must show photographic identification when casting a vote in person; and (3) voters must have their signature verified and provide a full Kansas driver's license or non-driver ID number when voting by mail.
Effective Feb. 24, 2012 (except K.A.R. 7-23-14 effective Jan. 1, 2013); ... K.A.R. 7-23-14. Assessing documents submitted as evidence of United States citizenship.
On May 17, 2016, the Court issued an extensive Memorandum and Order granting in part Plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the Kansas DPOC law until this case could be decided on the merits. It was effective on June 14, 2016. The Tenth Circuit affirmed that ruling on October 19, 2016.
Ultimately, Robinson would lacerate von Spakovsky's testimony, much as she had Richman's. Von Spakovsky's statements, the judge wrote, were 'premised on several misleading and unsupported examples' and included 'false assertions.' As she put it, 'His generalized opinions about the rates of noncitizen registration were likewise based on misleading evidence, and largely based on his preconceived beliefs about this issue, which has led to his aggressive public advocacy of stricter proof of citizenship laws.'
Robinson said several times during the hearing that her ruling made it clear the voters covered by her injunction were not to be treated differently from other registered voters. She also said Kobach had assured her in telephone hearings that he had instructed his office to order county election officials to mail the postcards to all voters covered by her order. ... "Why would I order something in writing that you've told me is being taken care of?" Robinson asked Kobach. "(As an officer of the court) you are under an ethical obligation to tell me the truth. If you tell me you are going to do that, I trust that." ... "Isn't one of the advantages of having the manual online is that they can be modified quickly?" said Robinson, who later added it was a "ridiculous system" to take so long to change a few sentences in the manual.
[W]e AFFIRM the district court's grant of a preliminary injunction and REMAND the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson found Kobach, a conservative Republican running for Kansas governor, in contempt of court.Robinson ordered Kobach to pay court costs, including more than $26,000 in attorney fees for the American Civil Liberties Union, which sought the contempt ruling.