Felony disenfranchisement ruling offers lessons on standing
State Court Report
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When does a plaintiff have a sufficient stake in a dispute to give them standing to sue? A recent Minnesota Supreme Court decision illustrates the ways that states differ from federal courts in regulating citizens’ access to the courtroom.
Earlier this month, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the state’s Re-Enfranchisement Act, which restored voting rights to approximately 60,000 Minnesotans with felony convictions. The plaintiffs in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Hunt argued that the Minnesota Constitution, which provides that individuals with felony convictions are ineligible to vote unless “restored to civil rights,” prohibits the legislature from restoring voting rights unless it also restores other civil rights lost due to a felony conviction, such as the right to serve on a jury. Because the Re-Enfranchisement Act only restored the right to vote, plaintiffs argued, it violated the state constitution.
It was, in my view, a dubious argument, particularly given an earlier Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that seemed to invite the exact law that was eventually passed. Ultimately, however, the court didn’t decide the case on the merits. Rather, the court held that the plaintiffs, individual taxpayers and an association to which they belong (which describes itself as an “election integrity group”), lacked standing to bring the suit in the first place.
Standing is the question of whether a given plaintiff has a sufficiently real connection to a dispute to establish a basis to bring a lawsuit in court. For cases in federal court, Article III of the U.S. Constitution requires a case or controversy, which the Supreme Court has interpreted to mean that plaintiffs must show they have a concrete injury, traceable to the challenged conduct, and likely to be redressable by a favorable court ruling. It’s a standard that makes it very difficult to challenge certain kinds of illegal conduct: if the impact on any given individual is speculative, or if an impacted plaintiff can’t point to a concrete injury, standing doctrine likely means that they won’t even get into the federal courtroom.
But state courts are another story. State courts aren’t bound by the U.S. Constitution’s case or controversy requirement, and in fact, most state constitutions lack similar language. While state courts normally do require some form of injury in order to bring a lawsuit, many define injury more expansively than their federal counterparts. Exceptions also abound — from doctrines allowing state courts to hear cases of high public importance to provisions allowing for advisory opinions.
In Minnesota Voters Alliance, the plaintiffs relied on a theory of taxpayer standing, arguing that they were injured because their tax dollars would be used to notify and educate impacted people about voter eligibility changes that they argued were illegal. Under federal standing principles, taxpayer standing is almost always a nonstarter (with narrow exceptions for certain cases under the Establishment Clause and claims brought by local taxpayers against municipalities), because it’s seen as a way of asserting a generalized grievance against government conduct.
But taxpayer standing is widely recognized in state courts: a 2012 law review article found that at least 36 states, including Minnesota, permit taxpayer lawsuits. However, while Minnesota Voters Alliance recognized the continued viability of taxpayer standing, it also clarified its limits. Taxpayer standing, the court explained, allows taxpayers who are not directly or personally injured by a law to challenge an illegal expenditure of funds. But expenditures that are only “incidental to implementing the law” can’t form a basis for taxpayer standing — otherwise, it would allow for virtually any law to be challenged by taxpayers. In the case of the Re-Enfranchisement Act, because the law’s focus is the restoration of voting rights, the mere fact that there are some public expenditures associated with implementing the law isn’t enough to create taxpayer standing.
There’s much more to say about standing, including, as detailed in a recent State Court Report piece, how some states are embracing more rigorous standing requirements when it comes to abortion litigation. But Minnesota Voters Alliance is a good case study for understanding standing in the states, including the policy tradeoffs reflected in questions of how broadly standing should be defined. There’s such a thing as making litigation too easy, and defining taxpayer standing too broadly risks a deluge of cases that can burden the courts and other litigants. But by not reaching the merits, the Minnesota high court also left legal uncertainty around voter eligibility while a high-stakes election looms.
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You can find briefs and opinions from notable state constitutional lawsuits in our State Case Database.
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Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
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