Voter ID suit should be tossed after plaintiff dies, state officials argue

[struggle4progress]

Source: Associated Press

Aug. 30, 2013 5:05 PM

MADISON — Wisconsin officials say a federal challenge to the state’s voter ID law should be tossed because the only individual plaintiff died 10 months ago.

The lawsuit was filed last year by several groups who say it discriminates against blacks and Latinos ...

The lead plaintiff in one federal case is Bettye Jones, a black woman who lacks a birth certificate.

The state filed a motion Friday saying it recently learned Jones is dead, and the other plaintiffs are organizations that lack standing to sue ...

Read more: http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/viewart/20130830/GPG0101/308300426/Voter-ID-suit-should-tossed-after-plaintiff-dies-state-officials-argue

[Control-Z]

1. Fuck them.

Sorry, but that is all I can say right now. I'm so pissed!

[PoliticAverse]

2. Welcome to the "lack of standing" issue used so often these days...

Presumably they can find someone else that lacks a birth certificate to replace the original plaintiff.

[struggle4progress]

3. There's nothing wrong IMO in requiring a plaintiff in a suit to show standing: generally

what it means is that the plaintiff suffers some non-trivial harm, so that the suit is about a real issue that actually affects the plaintiff

It's not a new doctrine

Without a standing requirement, the courts could be clogged with ideologically-motivated suits brought by persons who themselves with no material interest in the outcome

And it's not necessarily true that an organization lacks standing in a case like this

[Festivito]

4. She would have heirs and a legacy to protect.

And if our courts are clogged it is not that we have too many ideas, rather, we have too little funding for the ideas we have.

[7962]

6. Same thing happened with the Paula Dean case; dropped.

The plaintiff had no "standing" to file the suit. Doesnt mean anything regarding guilt or innocence.

[Uponthegears]

5. We have lost already

if we accept the truism that the named plaintiff must be a black person who never had a birth certificate (usually an elderly person) in order to have standing.

In order to bring a suits under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, you don't have to show that you were absolutely denied a statutory or constitutional right. You only have to show that you are a member of a protected class (race is one of them) and that the government (state or federal) has either: (1) intentionally taken action that has made it significantly more difficult for your class to exercise that right than someone outside your class; or (2) taken an action with no discriminatory intent that, in practical effect, made it significantly more difficult for your class to exercise that right than someone outside your class.

When we choose these extremely narrowly-definable plaintiffs, we not only narrow the scope of the relief we can get from the courts, we make it simple for Red States to "fix" their laws (for example, making a legislative finding that people over 80 don't have birth certificates and exempting all people over 80 from the Voter ID law), and we make it look like we are using a very small problem to attack a law because it hurts us politically.

The truth is that Voter ID laws adversely impact a large swath of people of color. We need to plead it. We need to prove it. We can do both.