Alabama, Georgia and Kansas saw their voter ID laws survive a court challenge brought by the League of Women Voters and the NAACP, with an assist from Barack Obama and Loretta Lynch. Today was just to hear motions and the judge was asked to put an injunction in place in order to force those three states to abandon their voter ID laws. But the meaning behind the decisions speaks volumes. The decision whether to place an injunction comes down to who you think will win the actual court case. By letting the laws stand, he is saying that it’s unlikely that the plaintiffs will be able to make their case.
U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia Judge Richard Leon ruled that no damage would be done by allowing the law to stand until arguments are heard on March 9th.
Leon wrote in a four-page order that because “the registration deadlines for the Alabama and Georgia primaries and for the Kansas Republican Caucus had already passed at the time this TRO motion was filed … and that the effects of the [EAC’s] actions on the ongoing registration process for the Kansas Democratic Caucus … are uncertain at best, plaintiffs have not demonstrated they will suffer irreparable harm” before the scheduled March 9 hearing.
Leon was also “not yet convinced that plaintiffs have demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits and looks forward to the benefit of full, adversarial briefing on the complex and important issues this case presents.”
The National Review assigned Hans von Spakovsky, a former DOJ lawyer to keep an eye on the case and these are some of his observations:
“Everybody should know, the federal government says to employers ‘you can’t employ anybody’ unless they provide proof that they’re citizens,’” von Spakovsky explained on Mark Levin’s radio program Tuesday night.
“The states pass this great law, and they sent a request to the EAC, because that’s the agency that’s in charge of the federal one-page voter registration form. They said, ‘Look, please change the instructions so that any of the residents in our states that use that federal form to register to vote, they’re told they’re going to have to provide proof of citizenship,’” von Spakovsky explained.
“That happened three weeks ago and immediately the League of Women Voters, the NAACP and these other organizations all sued the EAC, saying, ‘You can’t do that. That’s a violation of the law.’”
“The Justice Department’s job is to defend federal agencies when they are sued like this. Instead, on Monday of this week a hearing had been scheduled in federal court in Washington before Judge Richard Leon because the plaintiffs were seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction.”
“And they had told the agency that not only would they not defend them, but they refused to allow the agency to hire its own lawyer,” said von Spakovsky, noting that Judge Leon was “clearly shocked” by DOJ’s behavior.
“Normally in a hearing like this each side gets equal time. Well, [the judge] gave the plaintiffs who tried to get the court order 20 minutes to argue the case and then he turned to the Justice Department and said, ‘Well, I’m only giving you five minutes, because I know you agree with everything the plaintiffs are saying,’” explained von Spakovsky.
That will cost democrats tons of votes.