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Thursday, September 17, 2009

Ind. Decisions - "Indiana officials ridiculed the decision and said it would be appealed to the state Supreme Court"; My thoughts [Updated]

Today's Court of Appeals decision in the case of League of Women Voters v. Todd Rokita, summarized earlier today in this ILB entry, is the subject of this NY Times story, reported by John Schwartz. From the story:

An Indiana appellate court on Thursday struck down a state law requiring voters to show identification — a law that the United States Supreme Court declared constitutional just last year.

The court said the law violated the Indiana constitution by not treating all voters impartially.

The state legislature passed the voter ID law in 2005, and it was challenged in federal court. The Supreme Court found the law constitutional in April 2008. In July of that year, however, the League of Women Voters brought a new suit in state court.

Thursday’s decision, then, had a sense of déjà vu for some, but with a different outcome. “The court here accepted a lot of the arguments that were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, “so it’s like a second bite of the apple.”

The major difference between Thursday’s state court decision and the Supreme Court’s decision in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board is that the state court was interpreting the state constitution, while the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution of the United States. Generally, state courts are given the last word in interpreting their own constitutions.

Indiana’s “Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause” is similar to the Equal Protection clause of the United States Constitution. But the unanimous three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals found that the voter ID law violated the guarantee of equal protection for all citizens because it did not require mail-in voters and residents of some nursing homes to produce state-approved identification.

Under Indiana law, the court said, it could be reasonable to regulate absentee balloting more stringently than in-person balloting. But the voter ID law does the opposite, the court argued, and “imposes a less stringent requirement for absentee voters than for those voting in person.”

Indiana officials ridiculed the decision and said it would be appealed to the state Supreme Court. During a news conferenceon Thursday, Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, attacked the court of appeals decision as “preposterous,” and told reporters “there’s nothing in the Indiana Constitution that goes beyond what the federal Constitution provides here.” He predicted that it would be overturned, saying, “This decision will be a footnote to history, eventually.”

But Daniel P. Tokaji, an associate professor at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, said that the Indiana Constitution “does indeed provide broader protection for voting rights” than the federal Constitution, and suggested the judges did not believe the law was intended to reduce fraud.

Here, from WISH TV, is an expanded quote from Governor Daniels:
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels called the ruling "transparently partisan", and promised an appeal. He said, "It's a preposterous decision, an extreme decision and came in this case from a judge who's been reversed before and I expect it to happen again."

The governor went on to call the ruling an act of judicial arrogance.

My thoughts: Now really! I find the Governor's heated statements about the opinion very disappointing, and his personal remarks disparaging the judge way over the top.

[Updated] A reader writes, highlighting the use of the phrase "transparently partisan":

In In re Wilkins, 782 N.E.2d 985, 985 (Ind. 2003), the Court held that while lawyers can criticize decisions of judges, they cannot recklessly make false claims about a judge's integrity.

Canon 3 B.(2) of the Code of Judicial Conduct clearly states that a judge "shall not be swayed by partisan interests...".

It appears that Gov. Daniels [a member of the Indiana bar] has accused, falsely or with reckless disregard for the truth, Judge Riley with violating Canon 3 by making a decision based on her partisan interests rather than on the law or the constitution. This statement would seem, under the Wilkins case, to be a violation of Rule 8.2 of the Code of Professional Responsibility.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 17, 2009 07:42 PM
Posted to Ind. App.Ct. Decisions