NewsA judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin on Thursday blocked a Wisconsin law that would place limitations on early voting, finding the “challenged provisions … clearly inconsistent with the injunctions” issued in 2016 regarding similar restrictive voting laws.
Wisconsin Act 369 was enacted by the legislature in December, allegedly to make voting practices uniform statewide. The three challenged provisions of the law limited early voting to 14 days before an election, barred students from using an expired student ID to vote and prohibited students from using temporary IDs more than 60 days old to vote.
Plaintiffs in the case argued that the new restrictions violated the injunction order issued in 2016, by the same judge, regarding similar voting laws. Judge James Peterson agreed, rejecting defendants argument that the 2016 order did not apply to the new law.
The scope of the injunction relates to conduct that the court concluded was unlawful; the particular statutory provisions at issue are not important. If the court accepted defendants’ argument, it would mean that a legislative body could evade an injunction simply by reenacting an identical law and giving it a new number.
As well as arguments by defendants that removal of more restrictions in in-person absentee voting of the previous voting law made this law permissible. Peterson opined,
This argument ignores the fact that the court concluded that each restriction was independently unlawful and enjoined them separately. Defendants do not point to any language in the court’s opinion or injunction in which the court relied on the cumulative effect of the voting restrictions as justification for enjoining them. A party cannot avoid an injunction by complying with parts of it while disregarding others. Although Act 369 expands the early voting window slightly, it is still a “state-imposed limit on the time for in-person absentee voting,” so it violates the injunction.
An appeal of the order issued in 2016 is currently pending in the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.
