Mississippi: 5th Circuit vacates party registration and voter I.D. case
AP reports: The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned a ruling that would have forced Mississippians to register by political party and to show photo identification at the polls to be able to vote.
The Mississippi Democratic Party sued in 2006 to keep non-Democrats from voting in its primaries. -- WLOX-TV and WLOX.com - Building South Mississippi Together |This Hour: Latest Mississippi news, sports, business and entertainment:
Thanks to Steve Rankin for sending me the opinion. Here are the first two paragraphs of the opinion:
Plaintiffs Mississippi Democratic Party and Mississippi Democratic Executive Committee filed a declaratory judgment action seeking to overturn as unconstitutional Mississippi’s semi-closed primary1 statute, Miss. Code Ann. § 23-15-575. They succeeded beyond their expectations when the district court declared the statute unconstitutional and fashioned a sweeping injunction. that required not only party registration but also photo identification in order to vote in a party’s primary. The court’s ruling spawned a free-for-all on appeal. Plaintiffs themselves cross-appeal the mandatory photo ID requirement. Intervenors NAACP and the Mississippi Republican Executive Committee also challenge separate portions of the decree. The state is divided: defendant Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood argues that plaintiffs’ claims are not justiciable, while governor Haley Barbour and the Secretary of State have filed a brief supporting photo IDs for voters. In the meantime, the state legislature has been debating changes in the primary law. We will put the parties out of their litigation misery.
Because plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that their claims involve an actual case or controversy, the claims were not justiciable and should not have been addressed by the district court. The judgment is REVERSED and the injunction VACATED.