[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [official website] on Friday granted a stay [opinion] on the preliminary injunction that had halted Michigan’s ban on taking selfies [Mich. Comp. Laws § 168.738(2), text] with completed voting ballots. In granting the stay, this places the ban back into effect. The district court opinion [JURIST report] below had held such a ban was a violation of First Amendment free speech [text]. Michigan has banned exposing marked ballots to others since 1891, making plaintiff Joel Crookston’s 2012 “ballot selfie” technically illegal. Crookston filed suit to permit such pictures, an issue the appeals court elected to table until after the coming presidential election. In the opinion, Judge Jeffrey Sutton acknowledged that Cookston raised important First Amendment question, but stated that “timing is everything[, and] we will not accept his invitation to suddenly alter Michigan’s venerable voting protocols, especially when he could have filed this lawsuit long ago.”

Voter rights continue to plague this election cycle. Earlier this week, A New York law prohibiting a person from showing the contents of her prepared voting ballot was challenged as unconstitutional [JURIST report] by state voters for violating their First Amendment rights. The complaint alleges that the law infringes on voters’ freedom of speech and freedom of expression under the US Constitution as well as the New York state Constitution. In the past month similar laws banning the ballot selfie have been rejected in Michigan and New Hampshire [JURIST report]. Last week a federal court denied an emergency motion [JURIST report] from North Carolina counties to extend the hours of early voting. Earlier this month a district court judge ruled [JURIST report] that Ohio must allow most unlawfully purged voters to vote in November. In September a district court judge granted [JURIST report] a motion blocking Illinois from allowing voter registration on election day in the state’s most populated counties.