A law that aims to prevent Montana residents from voting more than once in an election will remain blocked, at least for now, after a federal appeals court rejected an appeal from state officials.
The law, Montana House Bill 892, requires that Montana voters not be registered to vote in more than one place in the state, or any other state. The law also requires people registering to vote to share where they were previously registered.
People who violate the law can be fined up to $5,000 and face a possible prison sentence of up to 18 months.
Montana officials said the judge wrongly entered a preliminary injunction, or blocked the law as the case is considered, but the panel said that wasn’t true.
“The district court did not abuse its discretion when it determined that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their overbreadth claim,” U.S. Circuit Judges Susan P. Graber, Consuelo M. Callahan, and Lucy H. Koh said.
Morris correctly determined Montana officials can prevent double voting but that the law goes too far, the panel said, pointing to declarations from plaintiff groups that some of their thousands of members could be discouraged from registering to vote in Montana, compared with officials saying there were 14 instances of suspected double voting in Montana in the 2020 election.
“Given these facts, we discern no abuse of discretion in the district court’s determination that HB 892 criminalizes a substantial amount of non-fanciful protected speech relative to its limited legitimate sweep,” the panel said.
It said that blocking the law was correct because not doing so would open people up to criminal penalties for violating it, or irreparably harm them.
To secure a preliminary injunction, plaintiffs have to meet certain thresholds, including a likelihood of success and the prospect of irreparable harm.
The circuit judges declined to consider an argument by Montana officials that voter registration is not protected speech and that, therefore, there is no First Amendment right for people to be registered to vote in multiple places, because the officials did not raise the argument prior to the ruling from Morris. Federal appeals courts typically only consider arguments presented before a district court.
“We are disappointed in the decision but look forward to defending the law on its merits as the case proceeds,” a spokeswoman for the Montana Department of Justice told The Epoch Times in an email.
“Montana’s bipartisan bill protected against a bipartisan concern, and halting it was the wrong decision,” a spokesman for Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen told The Epoch Times in an email.
The Montana Public Interest Research Group and the Montana Federation of Public Employees, which brought the case, did not return requests for comment.
