[00:00:00] Speaker 01:
And we will take up the Familia Bota versus Arizona.

[00:00:51] Speaker 01:
I was just checking to make sure that time was correct, okay.

[00:00:59] Speaker 01:
So Mr. Langhofer.

[00:01:02] Speaker 03:
Good afternoon, Your Honors and Judge Gould.

[00:01:04] Speaker 03:
I'm Corey Langhofer for the intervener appellants.

[00:01:08] Speaker 03:
I'm going to endeavor to sit down with four minutes left and I'll of course keep track of my own time.

[00:01:15] Speaker 03:
I'd like to, of course I'm most interested in addressing the issues that are of interest to the court, but without, I was thinking perhaps it's best to start with the mail-in voting provisions under the MVRA, the ruling at least under the MVRA.

[00:01:30] Speaker 03:
When registering voters, Arizona accepts and uses the federal form full stop.

[00:01:37] Speaker 03:
The issue before you is about something that happens downstream of registration and for a subset of people who use the federal form.

[00:01:45] Speaker 04:
Sorry, before you get into the substance, my overarching question is, you know, it's it's no secret that the election is what 60 days away.

[00:01:53] Speaker 04:
what actually is live for this election that we, what issues are live for this election that we should be trying to expedite if we can, or is this all for future elections?

[00:02:05] Speaker 04:
Because I noticed there's no Purcell briefing in the merits, so.

[00:02:08] Speaker 03:
Yes, so we thought about this carefully before bringing a stay application, and in my client's view, the three issues that mattered for this election have already been resolved on the stay issue, so I think the rest of

[00:02:22] Speaker 01:
Okay, so are any part of the 2022 voting laws

[00:02:31] Speaker 01:
operating right now, in effect, going forward, as we've said here.

[00:02:40] Speaker 03:
Right.

[00:02:41] Speaker 03:
The only one, and that's the one that is the subject of the U.S.

[00:02:45] Speaker 03:
Supreme Court stay.

[00:02:46] Speaker 03:
Apart from that, nothing has been added.

[00:02:47] Speaker 01:
And that's the DPAC, right?

[00:02:49] Speaker 01:
That's the requirement of DPAC for the federal registration form.

[00:02:53] Speaker 03:
For the state form.

[00:02:54] Speaker 03:
Excuse me, Your Honor, yes, for the federal form.

[00:02:56] Speaker 01:
For the federal form, for purposes of voting for president, and for purposes of voting by mail, and for the state form for whatever other state election is going on.

[00:03:07] Speaker 03:
That's correct.

[00:03:08] Speaker 03:
So the only thing that is live right now in Arizona is as a result of this SCOTUS stay.

[00:03:15] Speaker 03:
Apart from that, it has not been implemented.

[00:03:18] Speaker 01:
So is registration still ongoing in the state of Arizona?

[00:03:23] Speaker 03:
It is.

[00:03:23] Speaker 03:
It will continue for about another 30 days.

[00:03:25] Speaker 03:
I may be off just slightly in the calculation of that, but about another 30 days.

[00:03:28] Speaker 01:
So I'm assuming you have some portion of your electorate who have registered pursuant to the NVRA and pursuant to LULAC and pursuant to the

[00:03:40] Speaker 01:
inter-tribal council decision by the Supreme Court and some other portion of your electorate that is being put to these new requirements from the 2022 Voting Act.

[00:03:53] Speaker 03:
That's correct.

[00:03:53] Speaker 01:
How's that working?

[00:03:55] Speaker 03:
It's working exactly as the statute requires it.

[00:03:58] Speaker 03:
So if you get to choose when you register which form you submit.

[00:04:03] Speaker 03:
If you submit a federal form,

[00:04:06] Speaker 03:
you will be registered even if you do not attach DPAC.

[00:04:10] Speaker 03:
You will be registered, we accept and use those forms for registration purposes.

[00:04:14] Speaker 03:
And you will also be able to vote by mail and vote in the presidential election, absent some action of this court that changes that.

[00:04:23] Speaker 03:
If you submit a state form, you need to attach DPAC if you want to be registered.

[00:04:29] Speaker 03:
I want to, contextually, I want to make a point that I think is probably not clear from the briefs and from the trial court's ruling.

[00:04:36] Speaker 03:
When you read all these pages about Deepak, you probably have a sense in your mind that voters need to take their form home and go to their file and find their birth certificate and copy it and staple it.

[00:04:46] Speaker 03:
It sounds modestly burdensome.

[00:04:49] Speaker 03:
That is not what is happening when we're talking about Deepak.

[00:04:52] Speaker 03:
We're talking about something completely different.

[00:04:54] Speaker 03:
For the overwhelming majority of voters in Arizona, it means you write your driver's license number on the form.

[00:04:59] Speaker 03:
That's it.

[00:05:00] Speaker 03:
You don't have to copy it.

[00:05:01] Speaker 03:
You don't have to attach it.

[00:05:01] Speaker 03:
I think we understand that.

[00:05:02] Speaker 03:
OK.

[00:05:03] Speaker 03:
I'm delighted to hear it.

[00:05:04] Speaker 01:
But isn't that all that LULAC was doing, too?

[00:05:08] Speaker 01:
It was requiring the county recorder's office to just check with the DMV.

[00:05:13] Speaker 03:
LULAC, as I understand it, required the county recorders to, in the absence of DPAC, search for it for the voter.

[00:05:20] Speaker 01:
So if you left your driver's license number... I mean, it was almost... The way I read the case law, it's almost automatically done.

[00:05:28] Speaker 01:
You just search your database, your DMV.

[00:05:31] Speaker 03:
It's hardly automatic, Your Honor.

[00:05:33] Speaker 03:
It requires personnel to do that.

[00:05:35] Speaker 03:
And there's evidence in the trial record about how that search is done.

[00:05:40] Speaker 03:
If you, and it's concerning the way that search is done.

[00:05:44] Speaker 03:
So if a county recorder gets a registration form under the LULAC consent decree that just says John Smith, and I was born on January 1st, they will search the driver's license database for a John Smith who was born on January 1st, and if there is one,

[00:06:03] Speaker 03:
They will assume, they'll sort of import the Deepak information for that John Smith born on January 1st, assuming it's the same person when there's not affirmative evidence, it's the same person because the information's on the form.

[00:06:15] Speaker 03:
That's concerning.

[00:06:16] Speaker 03:
So part of what the law does is tightens up your, it gets rid of the assumptions that someone with the same name and birthday is in fact the same person.

[00:06:26] Speaker 03:
There's more than four million voters in the state.

[00:06:28] Speaker 03:
Of course, some of them are going to have the same name, the same birthday.

[00:06:30] Speaker 04:
So it sounds like your answer then is that nothing that we do is going to affect this election, right?

[00:06:36] Speaker 04:
So we don't have to rush anything out.

[00:06:38] Speaker 03:
That is our view.

[00:06:39] Speaker 03:
Perhaps the state has a different view, but we we've moved for a stay on everything we thought was urgent.

[00:06:44] Speaker 03:
That's been litigated.

[00:06:44] Speaker 03:
And so perhaps the briefing schedule has been unnecessarily expedited at this point.

[00:06:49] Speaker 03:
That's very helpful.

[00:06:51] Speaker 03:
I was starting to say.

[00:06:53] Speaker 03:
on the mail-in voting issue, it does not affect all federal voters.

[00:06:57] Speaker 03:
In fact, it affects a subset, and that's because Arizona, by statute, has adopted a process that's very similar to what the LULAC consent decree required.

[00:07:05] Speaker 03:
So four things have to happen for you to be affected by this mail-in voting issue.

[00:07:09] Speaker 03:
First, you have to choose the federal form.

[00:07:11] Speaker 03:
The voter has to choose that.

[00:07:12] Speaker 03:
Second, you have to not attach DPOC, not give that information.

[00:07:18] Speaker 03:
Third, when the state checks its own systems using its own time for DPOC in its databases, as it must do statutorily, it has to find none of that.

[00:07:29] Speaker 03:
It has to be unable to establish that you're a citizen.

[00:07:32] Speaker 03:
And fourth, you have to not respond to the cure request that you get from the county.

[00:07:37] Speaker 03:
So only voters who do that, they pick the federal form, they don't touch DPAC, they're not showing the records to be a citizen and don't respond with it to the letter, therefore they're registered as fed only.

[00:07:48] Speaker 03:
That is the subset of people who would not be able to vote by mail.

[00:07:51] Speaker 03:
It's a subset of the federal form.

[00:07:53] Speaker 03:
It is downstream of registration.

[00:07:55] Speaker 03:
They're absolutely registered to vote.

[00:07:58] Speaker 03:
They just can't vote in person.

[00:07:59] Speaker 03:
They must vote in person.

[00:08:02] Speaker 01:
And they can't vote for the president.

[00:08:04] Speaker 03:
The presidential, that's correct under the statute.

[00:08:07] Speaker 01:
I mean, isn't that the whole ballgame here is the presidential election?

[00:08:11] Speaker 01:
I mean, this upcoming presidential election?

[00:08:15] Speaker 03:
Well, I think that issue from my perspective, as I was saying, is off the table, right?

[00:08:19] Speaker 03:
We won't get a ruling on that issue before the presidential election.

[00:08:23] Speaker 03:
So from where I sit, that's not the ballgame at all.

[00:08:27] Speaker 03:
We're fighting about state elections.

[00:08:29] Speaker 01:
But they're not going to be allowed.

[00:08:30] Speaker 01:
The ones who have chosen the barrel form are not provided

[00:08:35] Speaker 01:
Deepak will not be able to vote for the president.

[00:08:39] Speaker 03:
At the moment, that statute's not been implemented.

[00:08:42] Speaker 03:
It's been enjoined.

[00:08:43] Speaker 03:
So they absolutely will be allowed to vote for president and do it by mail unless this court reverses the trial court before ballots go out, which the ballots have already printed, in fact.

[00:08:52] Speaker 03:
So this only affects 2028.

[00:08:54] Speaker 03:
For president, yes.

[00:08:57] Speaker 03:
There won't be a presidential election between now and 28.

[00:09:00] Speaker 01:
And they'll be able to vote by mail in this election.

[00:09:03] Speaker 03:
This cycle, absolutely, Your Honor.

[00:09:07] Speaker 03:
And let me sort of slow down on that.

[00:09:08] Speaker 01:
that the plaintiffs will tell us otherwise if they think that there's something not correct about what you're saying?

[00:09:16] Speaker 03:
I hope they do.

[00:09:17] Speaker 03:
If I'm in error, I hope they correct me.

[00:09:19] Speaker 03:
But the ballots in Maricopa County, which is 65% of the state's population, and Coconino County, I want to say it's 7%, have already printed.

[00:09:30] Speaker 03:
So if you're a Fed-only voter, the Fed ballot that you get will include Congress and President.

[00:09:36] Speaker 03:
And the ballots will be mailed out 27 days before the election.

[00:09:40] Speaker 03:
It's about four weeks from now.

[00:09:43] Speaker 01:
Why the cert petition?

[00:09:45] Speaker 01:
I mean, why did you take it all the way up to the Supreme Court?

[00:09:50] Speaker 03:
The Supreme Court issued its stay the day that ballots printed, because we had asked them, please decide this by this day ballots are printing.

[00:09:58] Speaker 03:
This is the urgency.

[00:10:01] Speaker 03:
They said what they stayed.

[00:10:04] Speaker 03:
It didn't include the mail-in provision or the presidential provision.

[00:10:07] Speaker 03:
So as far as I'm concerned, those issues are gone for this election.

[00:10:11] Speaker 03:
Just no need to rush on that.

[00:10:15] Speaker 03:
I'm thankful to hear that.

[00:10:18] Speaker 04:
I say, let me sit.

[00:10:22] Speaker 04:
Can I bring you to another issue that gives me the hardest question, is the 90-day provision?

[00:10:29] Speaker 04:
To me, that provision of the National Voter Registration Act is pretty broad.

[00:10:36] Speaker 04:
It says any program to remove ineligible voters has to be done within 90 days.

[00:10:43] Speaker 04:
So how do you square that with the periodic check that Arizona wants to do?

[00:10:48] Speaker 03:
I think that actually tees up perfectly the problem with the plaintiff's, plaintiff's appellee's position in the district court.

[00:10:56] Speaker 03:
If you look at subsection A3 of the 90-day, the MVRA list maintenance provisions, including the 90-day blackout period, it says a state cannot remove a name from a voter roll unless it fits into one of these categories.

[00:11:11] Speaker 03:
Those categories include deceased, the person requested to be removed, they move out of the jurisdiction, they're a felon, or they're incapacitated.

[00:11:19] Speaker 03:
It doesn't say, and I'll remind you, it says you can't remove them unless they're in one of these categories.

[00:11:24] Speaker 03:
Then it goes on with details.

[00:11:27] Speaker 03:
It does not allow for removal for non-citizenship.

[00:11:30] Speaker 03:
It doesn't talk about that.

[00:11:32] Speaker 03:
Our position is that removal from non-citizenship can't be preempted because the MVRA blackout period just isn't dealing with removals for this reason.

[00:11:43] Speaker 03:
So there are two ways around this.

[00:11:45] Speaker 03:
If we're to read the A3 on its face that says you can't remove but for these reasons, there are two ways out of that problem.

[00:11:53] Speaker 03:
One way is the Sixth Circuit Solution in Marinko where they say,

[00:11:57] Speaker 03:
Fundamentally, what the NBRA is protecting is people who were properly registered, but now you're trying to de-register that.

[00:12:02] Speaker 04:
Well, I actually think that's wrong, because A3 says registrant.

[00:12:08] Speaker 04:
So you can only move registrants for those reasons.

[00:12:11] Speaker 04:
That's not the same thing as an ineligible voter, which the statute uses specifically in the 90-day part.

[00:12:19] Speaker 04:
And those mean different things.

[00:12:20] Speaker 04:
Or those are different words.

[00:12:22] Speaker 04:
They don't mean the same thing.

[00:12:27] Speaker 03:
A3 is concerned with the idea that someone is registered and you may be trying to remove them, but they're eligible.

[00:12:35] Speaker 03:
And then when we get to the 90-day provision, it's, I think, more concerned about, like, they may be eligible, but doing this at the last minute is unfair to them.

[00:12:43] Speaker 03:
So the subsequent sections are... Actually, they're just different words.

[00:12:47] Speaker 04:
And so A3, you could register... You know, registering to me means an eligible applicant that is registered, which follows A1, right?

[00:12:55] Speaker 04:
But the 90-day part says ineligible voters.

[00:12:58] Speaker 04:
So it does make sense that you could only remove eligible voters

[00:13:02] Speaker 04:
you know, for those prescribed reasons that you talked about, but when you get to the 90 days, all programs have to end, because it says ineligible orders, which is broader than registrants.

[00:13:14] Speaker 03:
So let's say my Rinko argument is not well received.

[00:13:19] Speaker 03:
The second path out is the general program description.

[00:13:23] Speaker 03:
So if you, our position is this,

[00:13:29] Speaker 03:
This is a facial challenge.

[00:13:29] Speaker 03:
We have to assume the statute would be properly enforced.

[00:13:33] Speaker 03:
We're not in the as-applied stage yet.

[00:13:35] Speaker 03:
The statute says if there is a confirmed non-citizen, confirmed non-citizen, then you contact them and say, we have confirmed that you're not a citizen.

[00:13:45] Speaker 03:
You have 35 days.

[00:13:46] Speaker 03:
Here's a postage-prepaid envelope.

[00:13:48] Speaker 03:
Tell us if we're wrong.

[00:13:53] Speaker 03:
When you have a process that confirms non-citizenship, gives proper notice and an opportunity to correct the record, that is not general, that's individualized.

[00:14:03] Speaker 03:
And so we're not in the general program anymore.

[00:14:05] Speaker 03:
The second path out of this problem where states must be permitted somehow to remove non-citizens is the individualized program.

[00:14:13] Speaker 03:
I candidly don't know what you could do more than that.

[00:14:17] Speaker 03:
Like, you confirm it in your records, you contact them, you make it free for them to respond, you say, please respond, you've got 35 days, that's a long time.

[00:14:24] Speaker 03:
I don't know what else can be done.

[00:14:26] Speaker 03:
And perhaps I'm missing something.

[00:14:28] Speaker 04:
But the system asked me, aren't they comparing the voter registration rules with, what, SAVE, the SAVE database?

[00:14:33] Speaker 04:
So that seems systematic.

[00:14:35] Speaker 04:
That's the, to me, problem.

[00:14:37] Speaker 03:
So I think that the SAVE is a good starting point.

[00:14:41] Speaker 03:
But the statute requires confirmation.

[00:14:43] Speaker 03:
We don't yet have, from the attorney general's office or from the elections procedures manual, rules on how this would be implemented, because it has not been implemented.

[00:14:52] Speaker 03:
But let's just thought experiment here.

[00:14:55] Speaker 03:
What if the rules from the attorney general say you start with save, and if that indicates that a person's a non-citizen, pause there.

[00:15:06] Speaker 03:
First of all, the trial court rightly found that save is reliable.

[00:15:09] Speaker 03:
It is the most authoritative database, distinguishing between naturalized immigrants and people who are here without status, or without citizenship, let's say.

[00:15:21] Speaker 03:
So if SAVE says you're not a citizen, that's indicative, but then you can look at the MVD databases.

[00:15:27] Speaker 03:
As you've read, there is some chance of error in SAVE.

[00:15:30] Speaker 03:
It's de minimis, I think it's fair to say, but there's some non-zero chance.

[00:15:35] Speaker 03:
If the person's registered to vote,

[00:15:37] Speaker 03:
The Arizona voter registration system will save an indicator of proof of citizenship for that person if it ever exists.

[00:15:45] Speaker 03:
It's sort of overriding an error in save.

[00:15:48] Speaker 03:
And for two years after you register, the county recorders have to keep proof of your citizenship.

[00:15:53] Speaker 03:
And so you can say, sure, let's start with save, but then we'll run it through the battery of other indicia we have and see if they're all consistent.

[00:16:01] Speaker 03:
If there's one indicator that the person's a citizen, it's done.

[00:16:04] Speaker 03:
If you get to the end of it and all of the evidence you have is not a citizen or no evidence of citizenship,

[00:16:09] Speaker 03:
That sounds like confirmation.

[00:16:10] Speaker 04:
The other part that's giving me heartache is the reason to believe and then section and whether or not that violates the CRA.

[00:16:25] Speaker 04:
And then, because my understanding is, if there's a reason to believe you're not a citizen, you must consult the SAVE database.

[00:16:33] Speaker 04:
And the SAVE database only includes naturalized citizens.

[00:16:36] Speaker 03:
Is that right?

[00:16:36] Speaker 04:
And you have to use the A-file number to get that information.

[00:16:39] Speaker 03:
The last part you want to set is wrong.

[00:16:42] Speaker 03:
OK.

[00:16:42] Speaker 03:
And I think that there's a lot of evidence in the district court on this.

[00:16:46] Speaker 03:
There's one document that very clearly establishes SAVE does not just include naturalized citizens.

[00:16:51] Speaker 03:
The district court's opinion on this, I think,

[00:16:55] Speaker 03:
written with less than perfect clarity, but I point you to exhibit 271.

[00:17:01] Speaker 03:
Unfortunately, this is not in the excerpts of record.

[00:17:02] Speaker 03:
I apologize for the inconvenience there.

[00:17:04] Speaker 03:
There are things in the excerpts that are close, but exhibit 271 from the trial court has this.

[00:17:08] Speaker 03:
SAVE includes, it is a body of data about people who were not born in this country.

[00:17:14] Speaker 03:
Many of them are naturalized, many of them are not.

[00:17:17] Speaker 03:
So if you're an SLE, if you're a- Well, that's still a limitation to it.

[00:17:20] Speaker 04:
So basically, if you're born in this country, you're not gonna be in SAVE.

[00:17:25] Speaker 04:
That is correct, you should not be.

[00:17:26] Speaker 04:
So then how does that not violate the part of the CRA which says that you have to be uniform with how you qualify other individuals?

[00:17:36] Speaker 04:
Because you can never qualify a US born voter through SAVE.

[00:17:41] Speaker 03:
That should be correct unless there's some sort of error in the paperwork.

[00:17:43] Speaker 03:
That should be the way it is.

[00:17:45] Speaker 03:
Our position on this particular question that you're asking is the CRA has never, that provision of the CRA has never been applied to invalidate a statewide statute because fundamentally that provision, the different practices provision is about

[00:18:01] Speaker 03:
local jurisdictions applying the statewide laws improperly, unfairly in some way.

[00:18:07] Speaker 03:
As long as you have a statewide uniform system, and you've read it, it's defined in statute, that is uniform, and that is compliant with the CRA at least.

[00:18:17] Speaker 03:
I see that I'm down to two minutes.

[00:18:18] Speaker 03:
I've exceeded my own goal.

[00:18:19] Speaker 03:
If you don't mind, I'll reserve the balance.

[00:18:21] Speaker 01:
All right, thank you.

[00:18:25] Speaker 01:
Let's see, Mr. Whitaker?

[00:18:36] Speaker 02:
Good afternoon, Your Honors, and may it please the Court, Josh Whitaker for Arizona and its Attorney General.

[00:18:42] Speaker 02:
I plan to use six minutes, and I doubt I'll have much time for a rebuttal.

[00:18:48] Speaker 02:
I'd like to start maybe with the question that you asked about how quickly should we decide this?

[00:18:56] Speaker 02:
And I think Mr. Langhofer described it generally correctly, but just to make sure we're on the same page, there's federal form applicants, and part of these laws say if you're a federal form applicant and you haven't

[00:19:09] Speaker 02:
Basically, if you haven't provided proof of citizenship, you can't vote for president or by mail.

[00:19:14] Speaker 02:
The district court enjoined those laws, and the Supreme Court declined to upset that injunction.

[00:19:19] Speaker 02:
So those laws are on hold.

[00:19:21] Speaker 02:
The part of the law that is now in effect, and I'm sure plaintiffs will talk about this more, is the part involving state forms.

[00:19:29] Speaker 02:
There's a part of the law that says, if you're going to use a state form and you don't provide proof of citizenship, then we're going to reject your application.

[00:19:38] Speaker 02:
So at a minimum, that will eliminate what we call the federal-only voters from state-form applicants going forward.

[00:19:51] Speaker 01:
State-form users.

[00:19:52] Speaker 02:
Yeah, so state-form users, as a result of this law, will no longer become federal-only voters.

[00:19:59] Speaker 02:
They won't vote at all.

[00:20:02] Speaker 02:
Well, if they provide DPAC, they'll be fully registered.

[00:20:06] Speaker 02:
If they don't provide DPAC, they won't be registered.

[00:20:12] Speaker 02:
There's some question right now as to how exactly to implement that.

[00:20:16] Speaker 02:
That means they don't get to vote in November, right?

[00:20:20] Speaker 02:
Yes.

[00:20:22] Speaker 02:
There's some question about how to implement that going forward because

[00:20:26] Speaker 02:
of how to mesh that law with ARS 16134B, which says that, hey, if proof of citizenship is supplied at some point, then you can vote.

[00:20:41] Speaker 02:
There's a question right now about how to implement those two laws jointly.

[00:20:47] Speaker 02:
So for example, if someone fills out a state form and the county recorder can easily view that the person has proof of citizenship given to the state, what is done about that situation?

[00:21:04] Speaker 02:
So just alerting the court.

[00:21:06] Speaker 01:
That's quite a bit of uncertainty.

[00:21:08] Speaker 01:
Isn't that contrary to this Purcell principle

[00:21:11] Speaker 01:
not creating such an uncertainty in the immediate, immediately preceding an election.

[00:21:20] Speaker 01:
There's quite a bit of uncertainty coming from the attorney general's office.

[00:21:26] Speaker 02:
Your Honor, I'm not here to argue that position.

[00:21:29] Speaker 02:
I just was trying to let the court know we're not appealing that issue.

[00:21:33] Speaker 02:
I'm just trying to let the court know what the state views about the situation right now.

[00:21:39] Speaker 04:
though, even if we ruled on that issue tomorrow, there's not enough time to get to get that go through the appellate process, the Supreme Court process before this election.

[00:21:50] Speaker 02:
I think it would depend on how the court rules, Your Honor, if the court were to say, we're going to

[00:21:59] Speaker 02:
go back and put in place the district court's injunction.

[00:22:03] Speaker 02:
I think that would be relatively easy to implement because that's essentially what had been happening before.

[00:22:07] Speaker 04:
But there's a stay before the Supreme Court.

[00:22:09] Speaker 02:
Right, of course.

[00:22:10] Speaker 02:
And the court must respect the stay pending.

[00:22:14] Speaker 01:
This stays there until we issue a decision on the merits.

[00:22:17] Speaker 02:
Yes, it's a stay pending appeal.

[00:22:19] Speaker 04:
I think it's a stay pending cert petition.

[00:22:21] Speaker 02:
No, it's a state pending appeal.

[00:22:23] Speaker 02:
You know, I'm out of my league here.

[00:22:25] Speaker 02:
I'm sorry.

[00:22:26] Speaker 02:
It's not even my issue.

[00:22:27] Speaker 02:
I just wanted to try to provide some clarity.

[00:22:30] Speaker 01:
What is your issue?

[00:22:32] Speaker 02:
Oh, OK.

[00:22:32] Speaker 02:
So my issue, the main one, is much simpler, actually.

[00:22:36] Speaker 02:
It's birthplace.

[00:22:36] Speaker 02:
So very quickly, there are five undisputed facts about birthplace that I think are relevant here.

[00:22:43] Speaker 01:
I think the big question is materiality.

[00:22:46] Speaker 02:
Yes, exactly.

[00:22:47] Speaker 02:
Let's get to it.

[00:22:49] Speaker 02:
Okay, so materiality.

[00:22:51] Speaker 02:
I heard counsel for the United States in the previous argument say that it's a mixed question of law.

[00:22:56] Speaker 02:
In fact, he was suggesting it means capable of influencing the decision-maker.

[00:22:59] Speaker 02:
I heard defense counsel in the previous argument say it's a question of law.

[00:23:02] Speaker 02:
Regardless, here it very clearly involves legal principles.

[00:23:07] Speaker 02:
It's essentially a statutory interpretation question because you're interpreting the federal materiality provision and whether it preempts the state law requiring birthplace.

[00:23:17] Speaker 02:
So what Arizona is proposing to do is say, okay, from now on, at least for state forums, there's already been a field on the forum to write your state or country of birth.

[00:23:29] Speaker 02:
At least in the last few decades, that's been optional.

[00:23:32] Speaker 02:
we would like to require it going forward in a way that is if someone refuses to fill it out and then gets notified and says, hey, we saw you didn't fill out this form, please fill it out, and still refuses to fill it out, then Arizona would not register that person.

[00:23:50] Speaker 02:
And that is material both to proving identity and to proving citizenship.

[00:23:56] Speaker 02:
birthplace is basic biographical information that virtually everyone knows about themselves.

[00:24:02] Speaker 02:
And it's also not the sort of thing that you can learn about someone else just by observation.

[00:24:06] Speaker 02:
It's commonly requested on government forums.

[00:24:08] Speaker 02:
The United States State Department has long required it for passports.

[00:24:12] Speaker 02:
In fact, it calls it integral.

[00:24:13] Speaker 04:
Can I ask real quickly before your time, you're not defending the checkbox.

[00:24:17] Speaker 04:
Is that on purpose or does Arizona have a position on that?

[00:24:21] Speaker 02:
We decided not to appeal the checkbox.

[00:24:23] Speaker 02:
We think, candidly, that

[00:24:25] Speaker 02:
the materiality of birthplace is stronger than the materiality of the checkbox.

[00:24:31] Speaker 02:
I think our briefs explain this very well.

[00:24:33] Speaker 02:
I'll quickly say that our reply brief, very much running out of time, but our reply brief carefully considers each objection raised by the plaintiffs and by the district court.

[00:24:42] Speaker 02:
So if the court has questions.

[00:24:45] Speaker 01:
The problem with the birthplace, I think it's the record before the district court was that predominant answers were

[00:24:54] Speaker 01:
Arizona, Mexico, or the US.

[00:24:59] Speaker 01:
And what does that tell you?

[00:25:02] Speaker 02:
So it's true that the United States has most answers.

[00:25:05] Speaker 02:
I think that overstates the record.

[00:25:06] Speaker 02:
But many answers were Arizona, Mexico, or the United States.

[00:25:09] Speaker 02:
It still tells you something.

[00:25:10] Speaker 02:
It still means that if someone, for example, were trying to use someone else's identity and register as that other person, they're still not sure what the birthplace would be.

[00:25:22] Speaker 02:
I, for example, maybe you'd guess I was born in Arizona, but I was actually born in upstate New York.

[00:25:27] Speaker 02:
It's information that's like,

[00:25:29] Speaker 02:
security related purposes that admittedly it's not the most fine-tuned information, but the materiality provision doesn't require that.

[00:25:36] Speaker 01:
But it doesn't go to the three criteria for eligibility to vote.

[00:25:44] Speaker 02:
Identity is a basic qualification to vote.

[00:25:47] Speaker 02:
The person who fills out a registration form must be the person that they say they are.

[00:25:52] Speaker 02:
That's vote.org, the Fifth Circuit case.

[00:25:55] Speaker 02:
It's viewed as an implicit qualification in any registration context, which makes sense.

[00:26:01] Speaker 02:
There's an Arizona statute, era 16-183, that criminalizes knowingly registering as another person.

[00:26:08] Speaker 02:
It's a very fundamental

[00:26:10] Speaker 02:
a feature of registrations that if you're going to submit a registration form, you are who you say you are.

[00:26:17] Speaker 01:
I take it back.

[00:26:18] Speaker 01:
You were right.

[00:26:19] Speaker 01:
It's till cert.

[00:26:20] Speaker 01:
So would there be time if this court were to do something to do another cert petition and get to the nub of this issue?

[00:26:31] Speaker 02:
Your Honor, I just haven't.

[00:26:33] Speaker 01:
I mean, it seems of concern.

[00:26:36] Speaker 02:
So I guess I would say this.

[00:26:39] Speaker 02:
Before the Supreme Court stayed that provision, county recorders had been following the status quo until then.

[00:26:49] Speaker 02:
So assuming this court were to reach a merits decision that joins the provision again,

[00:26:58] Speaker 02:
County recorders have in recent memory how to operate in that situation because they were already doing it.

[00:27:03] Speaker 01:
I don't I don't ask you what the with the 2023 voting manual provides the voting procedures manual sorry say that again three or the operative voting procedures manual

[00:27:17] Speaker 01:
What does it provide?

[00:27:19] Speaker 01:
Doesn't that ordinarily?

[00:27:21] Speaker 02:
Yes.

[00:27:22] Speaker 01:
Isn't that binding as a matter of law?

[00:27:25] Speaker 02:
Yes.

[00:27:26] Speaker 02:
The 2023 elections procedures manual has not accounted for the recent Supreme Court stay because it was issued at the end of 2023.

[00:27:33] Speaker 02:
And at that time, the district court had declared this statute unlawful.

[00:27:39] Speaker 02:
So in light of that declaration,

[00:27:41] Speaker 02:
the 2023 elections procedures manual was following what had already what had been happening before the law even was enacted.

[00:27:50] Speaker 02:
Right now obviously the Supreme Court has stayed that injunction so now the law is being treated as in effect so now there are questions about okay how are we going to start implementing this.

[00:28:03] Speaker 02:
And I'm way over my time, I apologize.

[00:28:06] Speaker 04:
Sorry.

[00:28:06] Speaker 04:
Sorry.

[00:28:07] Speaker 04:
You know, you mentioned that the problem with the factual findings on the district court on the materiality provision, to me that suggests that this shouldn't be a preemption statute.

[00:28:17] Speaker 04:
It says no person shall do this.

[00:28:20] Speaker 04:
Just because the district court made a factual finding that in some cases, most cases, doesn't mean that this provision can't be enacted in a way that doesn't violate the materiality statute.

[00:28:30] Speaker 04:
And doesn't that suggest that we should not use it as preemption and use it, and it's meant to be a cause of action after it's actually been violated?

[00:28:40] Speaker 02:
I don't think we've developed that argument, but there's a related point, Your Honor, which is when federal courts consider pre-enforcement challenges to state laws, you should try to be charitable and assume that it will somehow be implemented in a reasonable way.

[00:28:54] Speaker 02:
So an example of that is when the district court said, Arizona hasn't yet given a plan for how it's going to standardize the answers.

[00:29:00] Speaker 02:
Well, the law hadn't been implemented yet.

[00:29:02] Speaker 02:
I mean, the district court, I think, was expecting more of the state than could be reasonably expected in a pre-enforcement challenge.

[00:29:09] Speaker 02:
is how I would answer that.

[00:29:10] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:29:14] Speaker 01:
Thank you, Council.

[00:29:24] Speaker 05:
Good afternoon, Your Honors, and may it please the Court, Jonathan Backer for the United States.

[00:29:28] Speaker 05:
In my time today, I will address the United States' NVRA claims about the presidential and mail voting provisions, and I'll also address our materiality provision claims on the birthplace issue.

[00:29:39] Speaker 05:
Ms.

[00:29:39] Speaker 05:
Lang will address the non-U.S.

[00:29:41] Speaker 05:
appellee's claims, and Mr. Herrera will address the Promise Arizona plaintiff's cross appeal.

[00:29:47] Speaker 01:
May we just preliminarily get an understanding?

[00:29:52] Speaker 01:
Is your understanding the same as what is going on in Arizona right now?

[00:29:57] Speaker 05:
So I definitely agree that the injunction is still in place with regard to the mail and presidential voting provisions.

[00:30:04] Speaker 05:
On the LULAC consent decree, state form stuff, I'll defer to mislaying on that issue because that's not our claim.

[00:30:11] Speaker 05:
But diving into the presidential voting provisions, no one can test that those provisions are consistent with the NVRA's Accept and Use mandate, the only

[00:30:22] Speaker 05:
issue that the as they say that Congress has no power to regulate presidential elections now of course that that argument is foreclosed by this court's precedent in Wilson it's also foreclosed by the Supreme Court's precedent in Burroughs so that settles that issue I'm not so sure it's that settled but so Burroughs itself mentions that there's an exclusive province for states in presidential elections right

[00:30:45] Speaker 05:
for choosing the method of appointing presidential electors.

[00:30:50] Speaker 05:
So you can choose between appointment by the state legislature, for example, or popular election, as all states have decided.

[00:30:57] Speaker 05:
But what Burroughs holds is that once we're in election land, and there's presidential elections, that Congress has power to regulate presidential elections.

[00:31:07] Speaker 05:
And that was the campaign finance.

[00:31:09] Speaker 04:
That was campaign finance, not the actual running of an election.

[00:31:12] Speaker 05:
Sure, but campaign finance is part of running an election.

[00:31:15] Speaker 05:
It's part of the manner of running an election.

[00:31:18] Speaker 05:
This is how Burroughs describes the power.

[00:31:21] Speaker 05:
It says, the power essential to preserve the departments and institutions of the general government from impairment or destruction.

[00:31:28] Speaker 05:
If campaign finance falls under that fairly broad power, as it's described there, well then surely safeguarding suffrage itself, as the NVRA does, falls within that power.

[00:31:40] Speaker 04:
I'm not so sure I see that.

[00:31:41] Speaker 04:
I mean, campaign finance is regulating how the candidates spend their money, but how states run their actual voting is a very different thing.

[00:31:51] Speaker 05:
Well, Your Honor, I would argue that that rather capacious power must inherently, I mean, suffrage itself is about who the electorate is.

[00:32:00] Speaker 04:
That's fundamental to... Sure, but the Constitution said it goes to the states.

[00:32:05] Speaker 05:
No, it said that the manner of appointment, so is it going to be the method of appointment?

[00:32:11] Speaker 05:
Is it going to be a popular election as it is?

[00:32:13] Speaker 05:
in all states, or is it going to be something else?

[00:32:16] Speaker 04:
So your view is that if once the state chooses a direct election, then the federal government can legislate everything else?

[00:32:23] Speaker 05:
Well, the manner of the government.

[00:32:26] Speaker 05:
The manner of those.

[00:32:27] Speaker 05:
As this court said in Wilson, that it's a power on par with Congress's power under the elections clause.

[00:32:33] Speaker 04:
What's the limiting limit of what they can do once the state chooses direct election?

[00:32:37] Speaker 05:
Well, they can't change the method of election.

[00:32:40] Speaker 05:
But when it comes to manner of elections, that's what Burroughs holds.

[00:32:44] Speaker 05:
And it's what this court held in Wilson.

[00:32:46] Speaker 05:
But even if your honor disagrees, there's also the power to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments prohibition against racial

[00:32:54] Speaker 05:
Well, I'm glad you think so, Your Honor.

[00:32:57] Speaker 05:
But Congress found that restrictive voting laws were adopted with the purpose of preventing disfavored groups, including black Americans, from voting.

[00:33:08] Speaker 05:
And it found that racial disparities persisted in the 1980s and 1990s.

[00:33:12] Speaker 05:
So there's a sound basis to conclude.

[00:33:14] Speaker 04:
My only problem with that, then, though, is the district court made no ruling on that.

[00:33:18] Speaker 04:
So shouldn't we just remand for the district court to consider the 14th, 15th Amendment

[00:33:22] Speaker 05:
Well, I think that because the Katzenbach inquiry is just based on the legislative history, essentially, and what Congress was thinking when they enacted the statute.

[00:33:30] Speaker 04:
But there's a dispute about that, too.

[00:33:32] Speaker 04:
So should we let the district court all handle that?

[00:33:35] Speaker 05:
I don't think so, Your Honor.

[00:33:35] Speaker 05:
I think it's a legal inquiry because this is based on the Congress's findings and the legislative history.

[00:33:41] Speaker 05:
So I don't think that's necessary.

[00:33:43] Speaker 04:
It's congruent to proportionality.

[00:33:45] Speaker 04:
Is that a purely legal inquiry?

[00:33:47] Speaker 05:
Well, to be clear, Your Honor, it's not that congruence and proportionality has the Katzenbach

[00:33:51] Speaker 05:
Uh, uh, assessment and the interveners, uh, you know, forfeited any argument that congruence and proportionality, uh, would apply by not addressing that in their reply brief.

[00:34:01] Speaker 04:
Um, do you know, is that a fact, is that a purely legal question or is that a factual?

[00:34:05] Speaker 05:
I think that's a, that's a legal question.

[00:34:07] Speaker 05:
Um, uh, but moving on to the mail voting, uh, provisions, what the Supreme court held in inner tribal council.

[00:34:14] Speaker 05:
is that states must accept the federal form as a complete and sufficient voter registration application.

[00:34:20] Speaker 05:
And what HB 2492 does is it essentially gives partial credit to federal form applicants.

[00:34:27] Speaker 05:
It says, sure, we'll register you to vote, but as a part of the registration process, we're going to determine that you are ineligible to vote by mail.

[00:34:35] Speaker 05:
And so that is inconsistent with the accept and use mandate, and that

[00:34:39] Speaker 05:
Impulse is confirmed by the portion of the NVRA that outlines one narrow way in which federal foreign voters can be treated differently with respect to federal mail-in voting.

[00:34:51] Speaker 04:
So is it the government's position that that's the only additional requirement that all states can add to mail-in voting?

[00:34:59] Speaker 05:
well if it if it's tethered to the registration process as it is here I mean the the the federal form so let me give you like some states require you have to prove that you're going to be out of town or for some right so that you don't think that's preemptive

[00:35:14] Speaker 05:
The NVRA would not affect that.

[00:35:17] Speaker 05:
The problem here is that it's giving partial credit to the federal form applicants when it comes to mail voting and saying what modes of voting can you engage in.

[00:35:31] Speaker 05:
If it's just an excuse regime and that applies neutrally to all voters, then the NVRA would have nothing to say about that.

[00:35:40] Speaker 05:
But that's not what we have here.

[00:35:41] Speaker 04:
So what's the problem here then?

[00:35:42] Speaker 04:
They're just saying all voters have to provide DPAC to vote by mail.

[00:35:48] Speaker 05:
Because as we know from Inter-Tribal Council, DPAC is something in addition to what the federal form requires and what

[00:35:56] Speaker 04:
But then why can't it just be a condition on voting versus a condition on registration?

[00:36:01] Speaker 04:
I'm sorry?

[00:36:02] Speaker 04:
You said conditions on voting are fine, right?

[00:36:05] Speaker 04:
So why can't DPOT be considered a condition on voting?

[00:36:08] Speaker 05:
Because look at the way the statute is structured.

[00:36:10] Speaker 05:
It's saying as part of the voter registration process,

[00:36:14] Speaker 05:
If you're a federal form applicant, you need to provide something in addition to what the federal form requires at registration in order to even be eligible for mail voting.

[00:36:27] Speaker 05:
The state has made a choice to A, provide absentee voting, and B, to make the determination about whether someone is eligible to vote by mail as part of the voter registration process.

[00:36:38] Speaker 05:
And it requires something additional from federal form voters.

[00:36:41] Speaker 04:
But I guess that just seems a little inconsistent with the part that says that states can require you to vote in person for the first time, because that's not a registration issue.

[00:36:49] Speaker 05:
Sure, so that's a specific carve-out in the NVRA that says federal-form voters can be treated differently in one discreet way.

[00:36:58] Speaker 05:
The state can actually treat federal-form voters differently when it comes to mail.

[00:37:02] Speaker 04:
That's not a registration issue.

[00:37:04] Speaker 04:
That's an actual voting issue.

[00:37:05] Speaker 05:
Well, however the state structures it.

[00:37:08] Speaker 04:
That's exclusive condition on voting.

[00:37:11] Speaker 05:
It carves out a narrow way in which federal foreign voters can be treated differently, regardless of what stage of the process it comes.

[00:37:20] Speaker 05:
And this is something that goes beyond that and says we're going to treat them differently, not in that one narrow way.

[00:37:26] Speaker 05:
I see that amount of time.

[00:37:27] Speaker 05:
I would like to address the birthplace requirement, if that's all right with your honors.

[00:37:32] Speaker 01:
All right, go ahead.

[00:37:33] Speaker 05:
So the district court did not clearly err in finding the birthplace plays no role of consequence in determining voter qualifications.

[00:37:42] Speaker 05:
The materiality provision, you know, provides the standard that applies to this claims is that no error or omission can deny the right to vote that is not material to determining voter qualifications.

[00:37:56] Speaker 05:
And at trial,

[00:37:57] Speaker 05:
election official after election official said birthplace is not used to determine voter qualifications in Arizona and that's backed up by when it comes to citizenship you have DPOC already for all state-form voters so there's no need to further inquire but I guess my problem here is like couldn't there be one situation where birthplace would be relevant like for example you know if if they put a different birthplace than what's in the Deepak when that be relevant

[00:38:25] Speaker 05:
Well, I don't think so, Your Honor.

[00:38:27] Speaker 05:
That seems like it would just be a mistake because you have in hand actual physical, what the state says is satisfactory evidence of United States citizenship.

[00:38:36] Speaker 04:
Wouldn't a reasonable registrar give it more scrutiny?

[00:38:41] Speaker 05:
Well, I don't think so, Your Honor, because again, you have the physical documents in hand.

[00:38:45] Speaker 05:
And really, if that was the goal, it would be a rather poor fraud deterrent because the voter has the documents in hand that says what their birthplace was and then basically just didn't copy it down correctly.

[00:38:57] Speaker 05:
So it wouldn't be a very good fraud detector if that's what the purpose is.

[00:39:02] Speaker 04:
I know it just suggests that it's not really a preemption question.

[00:39:05] Speaker 04:
It should be a case by case set because if it's possible that one method is material in one case, then why would we strike down the whole statute?

[00:39:14] Speaker 05:
Well, because I think in this instance, that facially, the evidence at trial shows that there is no significant role that birthplace plays either.

[00:39:23] Speaker 05:
Yes, significant.

[00:39:25] Speaker 05:
That's what the state agrees.

[00:39:26] Speaker 04:
There is a case.

[00:39:28] Speaker 04:
It could be.

[00:39:29] Speaker 05:
Uh, that the state hasn't identified, didn't identify one at trial and district court found that they didn't.

[00:39:34] Speaker 05:
So that's citizenship.

[00:39:35] Speaker 05:
And, you know, briefly with respect to identity, I mean, Dr. Hersh's testimony shows pretty conclusively that birthplace is almost never going to be determinative in identifying duplicates, which is mainly what the state hangs its hat on.

[00:39:47] Speaker 05:
Um, and even so.

[00:39:50] Speaker 05:
finding duplicates isn't determining whether or not a voter is qualified to vote.

[00:39:54] Speaker 05:
It's really an administrative process of cleaning the file.

[00:39:57] Speaker 05:
Um, so thank you.

[00:39:58] Speaker 05:
We'd ask the court to affirm the district court's permanent injunction of HB 249 students, presidential and male voting provisions and its citizen checkbox and birthplace requirements.

[00:40:07] Speaker 05:
Thank you.

[00:40:09] Speaker 01:
Thank you, counsel miss Lang.

[00:40:15] Speaker 01:
Was there any evidence in the record before the district court as to the percentage of the electorate who fills out the federal form versus the percentage of the electorate that fills out the state form?

[00:40:31] Speaker 00:
Yes and no your honor so there's not exact percentages but there is a great deal of testimony to say that the vast majority of applications that come in paper forms come from the state form and that is consistent testimony from county recorders from plaintiffs who do voter registration drives from the election officials across the board so we don't have the data on kind of 90% versus 10% but the vast majority of paper applications are through the state form and

[00:40:58] Speaker 01:
And the registration that's taking place now, up till 30 days, I guess, before the election, is that just new voters?

[00:41:08] Speaker 00:
Yes, Your Honor, I think so, if I understand your question correctly.

[00:41:15] Speaker 00:
People who are registering right now are largely new voters.

[00:41:17] Speaker 00:
They may also be updating their voter registration if they've moved or whatnot.

[00:41:21] Speaker 00:
For the most part, those folks should not be affected by documentary proof of citizenship requirements, because they should already

[00:41:28] Speaker 00:
uh... deepak on file there's some exceptions having to do with really old apple old registrations or whatnot but for the vast majority are we're talking about new voters uh... and

[00:41:40] Speaker 00:
I think that that actually goes to one of the questions you were asking, Your Honor Judge Mubente, about could you attach the DPAC requirement just to mail voting as a neutral rule about mail voting?

[00:41:52] Speaker 00:
I think the answer to that, at least as to the NVRA, is yes.

[00:41:57] Speaker 00:
I mean, there'd obviously be different legal questions or potential challenges, but the answer is yes.

[00:42:02] Speaker 00:
The reason why this statute is not okay is it plainly does not do that.

[00:42:07] Speaker 00:
In fact, the registration statute that requires DPAC

[00:42:10] Speaker 00:
grandfather's in, all registrations looking backwards.

[00:42:14] Speaker 00:
So it is certainly not the case that everyone who votes by mail is required to provide DPAC.

[00:42:19] Speaker 00:
A huge percentage of the population does not have to.

[00:42:22] Speaker 00:
And that's why the NVRA preemption argument matters so much here, because the NVRA was about making new entrants, new registrants, an easy process.

[00:42:33] Speaker 00:
But instead, what we're doing with this statute is saying that new registrants are going to be penalized.

[00:42:39] Speaker 00:
They are not going to be treated the same way because of the way that they registered.

[00:42:45] Speaker 00:
Um, so it's a completely different circumstance than a kind of mail voting rule that required Deepak for everyone who wants to vote by mail.

[00:42:55] Speaker 04:
So have you been agreeing with what everyone's saying that nothing we can do will affect the 2024 election?

[00:43:01] Speaker 00:
I think that's right, Your Honor, unfortunately, because the Supreme Court did make it pending not only this decision on appeal, but also their decision on cert.

[00:43:10] Speaker 00:
I do think we are kind of where we are for good or for bad, obviously.

[00:43:16] Speaker 00:
Exactly.

[00:43:17] Speaker 00:
And I will say that, you know, I'm privy to my clients working hard on the ground to make sure that federal form applications are more available.

[00:43:28] Speaker 00:
Of course, this is the type of thing that we think would be really important to have been in place well before, you know, the 60 odd days before an election, but here we are.

[00:43:36] Speaker 00:
But I do think that I want to talk a little bit about that issue of the DPAC for state forms going forward and documentary proof of residence for state forms going forward.

[00:43:50] Speaker 00:
And here I think that the interveners run into the same, well, let me back up and first talk about the LULAC consent decree.

[00:44:01] Speaker 00:
I think the problem with the LULAC consent decree issue for the interveners is that we're just in the wrong procedural posture.

[00:44:09] Speaker 00:
The interveners have never sought to put aside the LULAC consent decree.

[00:44:16] Speaker 01:
I mean, the LULAC consent decree has expired or his jurisdiction, that district court judge's jurisdiction over the LULAC consent decree has expired.

[00:44:30] Speaker 01:
It still has the force of a binding judgment as to the parties involved, but could non-parties attempt to modify the LULAC consent decree at this point?

[00:44:44] Speaker 00:
A number of cases that we cite show that they can, including the Horn v. Flores case, which actually involved Arizona officials intervening to modify a consent decree.

[00:44:55] Speaker 00:
Another case we cite, Agostini, was a new group of parents that were not involved in the original case intervening and then moving to set aside a consent decree.

[00:45:04] Speaker 00:
So there are a number of cases cited by interveners.

[00:45:07] Speaker 00:
They all are in the posture of a Rule 60B motion to set aside the consent decree.

[00:45:13] Speaker 00:
And that makes good sense, because then that court will have to consider, OK, are there changed circumstances?

[00:45:18] Speaker 00:
Are those changed circumstances relevant to why we entered this federal permanent court order in the first place or not?

[00:45:26] Speaker 04:
So why couldn't we construe the intervention as a Rule 60B motion?

[00:45:31] Speaker 00:
Well, Your Honor, because it wasn't a Rule 60B motion.

[00:45:37] Speaker 00:
So interveners have never argued that.

[00:45:40] Speaker 00:
They have also never actually argued, in addition to not bringing the right procedural posture, they have also just not made the right legal argument.

[00:45:48] Speaker 00:
They have made two arguments about why the LULAC consent decree cannot be applied.

[00:45:54] Speaker 00:
Both are plainly wrong.

[00:45:56] Speaker 00:
One is that the consent decree no longer has any force because of the end of the continuing jurisdiction.

[00:46:01] Speaker 00:
This court's cases say that that's plainly not correct.

[00:46:04] Speaker 00:
So do a number of other circuit cases.

[00:46:06] Speaker 00:
It's a final permanent binding judgment.

[00:46:08] Speaker 00:
And the second is that they argue that a consent decree cannot supersede subsequent legislation.

[00:46:14] Speaker 00:
That's obviously wrong, too.

[00:46:16] Speaker 00:
If you look at a case like from the Ninth Circuit Hook, where there was a consent decree about prison conditions, part of it had to do with how the state was going to pay for certain things.

[00:46:27] Speaker 00:
Arizona passed a statute trying to basically overturn that consent decree, and this court said that no dice, they can't do that.

[00:46:39] Speaker 04:
So how could they have gotten out of the consent decree?

[00:46:43] Speaker 04:
You're basically saying there's no way out.

[00:46:45] Speaker 00:
Your honor, what I'm saying is that it's not the mere fact that there's subsequent legislation that could it's a new state law cannot necessarily mean that a federal consent decree is no longer any good now, but they could have argued.

[00:47:00] Speaker 04:
I thought you said 60B would work, and 60B is a change in law, right?

[00:47:03] Speaker 04:
So here there's a new law.

[00:47:05] Speaker 04:
It's new state law.

[00:47:06] Speaker 04:
Why can't that be a basis for a Rule 60B motion?

[00:47:09] Speaker 00:
It could.

[00:47:09] Speaker 00:
Let me try to explain, Your Honor.

[00:47:11] Speaker 00:
So Rule 60B is the right procedural mechanism.

[00:47:14] Speaker 00:
Then the question is, what argument do they need to make?

[00:47:17] Speaker 00:
It's not enough to just say, we changed the law so we don't have to pass the

[00:47:21] Speaker 00:
follow a federal court order anymore.

[00:47:24] Speaker 00:
That's the supremacy clause, right?

[00:47:26] Speaker 00:
But they could argue, actually we've changed the law and this consent decree isn't solving for any constitutional problem.

[00:47:34] Speaker 00:
There's no underlying federal constitutional problem that this consent decree solves.

[00:47:39] Speaker 00:
And in that context, because there is no federal constitutional reason for this consent decree,

[00:47:46] Speaker 00:
Therefore, the changed circumstances of this state law should, the state law should go into effect.

[00:47:53] Speaker 04:
If the consent decree was entered because there was a constitutional violation, and then how is that ever going to change?

[00:48:00] Speaker 00:
Well, quite frankly, Your Honor, if there's a constitution, well, if there is in fact a constitutional violation, if it is in fact an equal protection violation to treat these equally, then yeah, no state statute's going to change that.

[00:48:13] Speaker 00:
And that's just the law.

[00:48:16] Speaker 04:
Arizona is stuck in the LULAC consent decree forever.

[00:48:20] Speaker 00:
For the same reason that if this court put aside the consent decree, this statute exists, if this court determines that treatment of federal and state forms violates the Equal Protection Clause, then yeah, that law would be enjoined.

[00:48:35] Speaker 00:
So what they would have to argue, and what Horn v. Flores and a number of other cases say, is you have to argue that there isn't some ongoing federal constitutional harm.

[00:48:44] Speaker 00:
And I think they could very well make that argument.

[00:48:46] Speaker 00:
They just never have.

[00:48:48] Speaker 00:
In fact, they do argue in the alternative.

[00:48:51] Speaker 01:
I mean, they should go back to the district court and make that argument if they want.

[00:48:57] Speaker 00:
Absolutely, Your Honor.

[00:48:58] Speaker 00:
I think that, quite frankly, at this point, it might be forfeited.

[00:49:03] Speaker 00:
But yes, this is the wrong forum and the wrong posture to be considering those arguments.

[00:49:09] Speaker 00:
With respect to the documentary proof of residence requirement for state forms,

[00:49:14] Speaker 00:
The interveners have not made much argument, but what they have argued is essentially that you should take the word necessary in the statute and instead make it mean something like bare minimum relevance.

[00:49:27] Speaker 00:
And they have also said that they've adopted the argument of the dissent in ITCA in saying that we should defer to states on what is necessary.

[00:49:38] Speaker 00:
But the dissent tells us what the law isn't, not what the law is, of course.

[00:49:43] Speaker 00:
And what we know is that the law about what is necessary, it has to mean something.

[00:49:48] Speaker 00:
And they've put forward no evidence to suggest that documentary proof of residence is necessary.

[00:49:54] Speaker 00:
In fact, all of the evidence cuts in the opposite direction.

[00:49:58] Speaker 04:
court's reasoning, just because the grandfather in voters don't have to prove it, is that it?

[00:50:04] Speaker 00:
No, Your Honor.

[00:50:06] Speaker 00:
The court was, if you look at all of the factual findings from the case and kind of consider the district court's decision as a whole.

[00:50:13] Speaker 04:
There's one section on necessary, and it only cites that issue, right?

[00:50:17] Speaker 00:
She says that they have not met their burden, and then she goes on to cite that specific example.

[00:50:23] Speaker 00:
So I don't think that's correct, Your Honor.

[00:50:26] Speaker 00:
There's a finding that they have not met their evidentiary burden that it's necessary.

[00:50:32] Speaker 00:
You look at the record, that is plainly the case.

[00:50:35] Speaker 00:
What we know is that not only is there an attestation of penalty under perjury, but there's a complex GIS software system where every address on a voter registration form is verified.

[00:50:47] Speaker 00:
And that is a system that has been developed to adapt to rural Arizona, to the fact of nontraditional addresses, and the documentary proof of residence.

[00:50:59] Speaker 00:
And there is no evidence that that system is not working.

[00:51:02] Speaker 00:
There's one citation in the intervener's

[00:51:05] Speaker 00:
It actually cuts against interveners, because what that citation is, is to folks alleging that folks don't reside, that there are registrants that don't reside where they reside, when in fact that was wrong.

[00:51:20] Speaker 00:
The election official says, no, these people just don't understand how Arizona works.

[00:51:24] Speaker 00:
works and we have all these campers and these are folks who live in campers and they very much are residents.

[00:51:30] Speaker 00:
So there is all this evidence on the front end that we have a system that's working well and is well calibrated.

[00:51:36] Speaker 00:
All the election officials saying we don't need this and in fact this is going to muck up our system and make it very difficult to administer and we have no evidence on the other side.

[00:51:45] Speaker 00:
And that's the evidentiary burden that the court was looking at and then kind of added.

[00:51:50] Speaker 00:
And this statute is kind of internally nonsensical, where you'll accept an attestation for people who you have actual evidence live elsewhere.

[00:51:57] Speaker 00:
But for new registrants, you won't accept that attestation.

[00:52:01] Speaker 00:
I think that was a very reasonable inference for the court to make.

[00:52:05] Speaker 00:
I do want to pivot quickly to two provisions that you asked about, Your Honor, the 90-day provision and the reason to believe.

[00:52:14] Speaker 00:
And I think your honor hit the nail on the head when you said this language is pretty darn broad in its scope.

[00:52:25] Speaker 00:
And yet defendants want you to take any program and turn it into one program, a general program about people who've moved.

[00:52:35] Speaker 00:
Of course, if they wanted to say the general program we discussed in the earlier section, they could have just

[00:52:40] Speaker 00:
referred to the general program instead they said any program and I think your textual hook of saying that you know registrant and ineligible voters is quite sensible and quite frankly that earlier provision that Mr. Langhofer was talking about you know has been interpreted to also allow removal of non-citizens because quite frankly it would cause a constitutional problem if it wasn't

[00:53:03] Speaker 00:
When you're talking about the broad 90-day language, it's plain as day as to what it means.

[00:53:10] Speaker 00:
There was also a reference to the Marinko case, but I think the Marinko case is actually, once again, cuts against interveners for a couple of reasons.

[00:53:22] Speaker 00:
is it wasn't a 90-day case.

[00:53:25] Speaker 00:
It was about whether or not removals are permissible.

[00:53:28] Speaker 00:
If somebody is not eligible and never was eligible, the answer is yes.

[00:53:33] Speaker 00:
But it also shows you what an individualized inquiry would actually look like.

[00:53:37] Speaker 00:
So Morinco had individualized hearings.

[00:53:40] Speaker 00:
They didn't shift the burden to the voter.

[00:53:42] Speaker 00:
The burden stayed on the challengers to kind of show a bunch of individualized evidence.

[00:53:47] Speaker 00:
This voter is ineligible because we have an affidavit, we can show

[00:53:51] Speaker 00:
all this information about why this person specifically is individually ineligible.

[00:53:57] Speaker 00:
That is plainly not what's happening here.

[00:54:02] Speaker 00:
And the idea that just because you kind of send a notice to voters that that would somehow take it out of the systematic world of the 90 day provision is not only kind of nonsensical, but it is belied by intervenors argument that the only the quintessential 90 day program that's barred is the general program about

[00:54:24] Speaker 00:
removing folks who've moved, but that requires an individualized notice.

[00:54:30] Speaker 00:
So plainly, an individualized notice is not enough.

[00:54:33] Speaker 00:
And there's also a...intervenors also make an argument that the language that says that you can't remove someone unless you confirm that they're a non-citizen, that that would make it an individualized inquiry.

[00:54:48] Speaker 00:
But if you look at ARS 16-165K, what you'll see is a definition of confirm, which is just about looking at more databases.

[00:54:58] Speaker 00:
So it's all systematic, and there's nothing individualized in any of these statutes.

[00:55:04] Speaker 00:
On the reason to believe provision, intervener's primary argument is that statewide statutes are immune.

[00:55:11] Speaker 00:
There's nothing in the text of the statute that would suggest that.

[00:55:16] Speaker 00:
In a 1965 Civil Rights Act,

[00:55:19] Speaker 00:
I'm not sure why we would think that discrimination enshrined inside a statute instead of at a local level would be any more immune from the reach of the federal government.

[00:55:30] Speaker 00:
The federal government at that time was equally concerned with discrimination at the state level as it was with the local level.

[00:55:38] Speaker 00:
And one kind of fine point on that is the quintessential example that interveners point to of a

[00:55:49] Speaker 00:
materiality violation, which is they make the same argument in the materiality context that state statutes should be immune.

[00:55:55] Speaker 00:
The quintessential example they provide is having to provide your birth date or your age in years, months, and days.

[00:56:03] Speaker 00:
That was in the Louisiana Constitution.

[00:56:06] Speaker 00:
That was not something that was being done at the ad hoc level.

[00:56:10] Speaker 00:
It was a state statute, and that doesn't make it immune from the materiality clause.

[00:56:15] Speaker 00:
And that same argument fails as to the reason to believe provision as well I See I'm well over my time your honor.

[00:56:23] Speaker 00:
So if you have no further questions Thank you very much Good afternoon your honors

[00:56:40] Speaker 06:
I'd like to reserve a minute of my time.

[00:56:42] Speaker 06:
I know I don't have very much.

[00:56:44] Speaker 01:
There's no reserving at this point.

[00:56:49] Speaker 06:
Oh, I see.

[00:56:52] Speaker 01:
Why don't you just tell us what you have to say?

[00:56:58] Speaker 06:
Good afternoon, your honors, and may it please the court.

[00:57:00] Speaker 06:
I'm Ernest Herrera, and I represent Promise Arizona and Southwest Voter Registration Education Projects, cross-appellants in this case.

[00:57:08] Speaker 06:
And thank you for the additional five minutes today.

[00:57:11] Speaker 06:
The district court correctly cited Arlington Heights for analyzing whether Arizona enacted House Bill 2243 with the intent to discriminate against Latinos.

[00:57:21] Speaker 06:
However, the district court clearly erred by requiring direct evidence of animus toward Latinos.

[00:57:26] Speaker 06:
at every step of the Arlington Heights analysis.

[00:57:29] Speaker 06:
I will first address how the district court erred as to its overall analysis, how the district court failed to consider some of its findings as impact evidence, and how the district court erred as to the other factors, legislative history, contemporaneous statements of legislators, and substantive and procedural departures.

[00:57:48] Speaker 04:
Before you get there, can you talk about your standing?

[00:57:52] Speaker 06:
Of course, Your Honor.

[00:57:54] Speaker 04:
especially after a Hippocratic... Of course, Your Honor.

[00:57:59] Speaker 06:
The simple answer, the simple way to explain it is we're not, our clients were not doing a spending spree of advocacy after the law was passed in terms of advocating against the law.

[00:58:13] Speaker 06:
The resources having to be diverted by both of our clients are on

[00:58:20] Speaker 06:
addressing people who receive a notice and having to get ready for addressing such notices.

[00:58:28] Speaker 06:
So working, spending time with individuals who they've signed up for.

[00:58:34] Speaker 06:
Well, the notices that would go out under this law, Your Honor.

[00:58:38] Speaker 06:
Yes, sir.

[00:58:38] Speaker 06:
So it would be, Your Honor, the notice would be sent out if someone is flagged by such a database comparison.

[00:58:46] Speaker 06:
And so our clients would be spending

[00:58:49] Speaker 06:
Money to have to actually if it's someone they signed up to register to vote.

[00:58:54] Speaker 06:
They'd have to help them with that and Only confer standing once that your client receives that notice if there's a if there's a threat to if there's a Immediate threat to them being able to receive it then that ever that accomplishes standing here

[00:59:11] Speaker 04:
I don't know if that's organizational.

[00:59:13] Speaker 04:
I think you have to divert resources before the threat.

[00:59:16] Speaker 04:
But anyway, go ahead.

[00:59:17] Speaker 06:
And then for Promise Arizona also has standing, a representational standing.

[00:59:22] Speaker 06:
So its members are naturalized citizen voters who Promise Arizona actually helped prepare for the citizenship test.

[00:59:31] Speaker 06:
And so the members, the actual members of Promise Arizona

[00:59:36] Speaker 06:
are people who, Promise Arizona, prepared to become citizens.

[00:59:40] Speaker 06:
And then once they became citizens, registered, helped them register to vote.

[00:59:44] Speaker 06:
And so they would have association standing.

[00:59:49] Speaker 01:
I just ask you a question, having heard what we've heard with what's going on with the state form.

[00:59:56] Speaker 01:
People have registered on the state form.

[01:00:00] Speaker 01:
It sounds like it could be some of your clients are Promise

[01:00:06] Speaker 01:
Arizona's clients.

[01:00:08] Speaker 01:
Are any of them currently getting notices that they need to somehow submit DPAC to the state?

[01:00:20] Speaker 06:
As a function of 2492?

[01:00:22] Speaker 06:
Yes.

[01:00:23] Speaker 01:
As a function of these new laws.

[01:00:27] Speaker 06:
Not that I'm aware of, Your Honor.

[01:00:29] Speaker 06:
However, I should say that Promise Arizona Southwest voter, because

[01:00:34] Speaker 06:
We sued before the cases were consolidated.

[01:00:36] Speaker 06:
We are only challenging House Bill 2243, the registration maintenance provisions.

[01:00:42] Speaker 01:
OK.

[01:00:42] Speaker 06:
So I can't speak to that for any of the other plaintiffs who sued on 2492.

[01:00:45] Speaker 06:
OK.

[01:00:46] Speaker 04:
So then on your issue, what's the best evidence of discriminatory intent?

[01:00:54] Speaker 06:
I wouldn't say there is one piece of best evidence, Your Honor, because the point of Arlington Heights is looking at the evidence as a whole.

[01:01:01] Speaker 06:
But.

[01:01:03] Speaker 06:
What's your strongest evidence then?

[01:01:04] Speaker 06:
evidence is that there was a climate of baseless accusations that people are not only not citizens registered to vote, but are illegal immigrants trying to vote.

[01:01:17] Speaker 06:
And that climate didn't stop at President Trump on his January 6, 2020 speech or Rudolph Giuliani.

[01:01:25] Speaker 06:
It extended into an organization, Arizona Free Enterprise Club, that

[01:01:29] Speaker 06:
was a champion of these bills wrote these bills and made sure they got passed and especially 2243 made sure after it got vetoed by the governor got dumped into a shell bill and passed and that organization sent out a mailer to.

[01:01:45] Speaker 06:
legislators at one point saying, not characterizing people as non-citizen voters or potentially not having proven their citizenship with documents, so DPOC, but saying that they were illegals.

[01:02:02] Speaker 06:
So using the term illegals versus something like non-citizens.

[01:02:07] Speaker 04:
And that was the Arizona Free Enterprise Club?

[01:02:10] Speaker 06:
Yes, Your Honor.

[01:02:12] Speaker 04:
Do we, do we attribute Arizona's actions to what this club did?

[01:02:18] Speaker 04:
I mean, why is that they're not a government entity, right?

[01:02:20] Speaker 06:
Well, that, that is one aspect of it.

[01:02:22] Speaker 06:
Well, one aspect of it, your honor is that the legislature relied on the expertise of the free enterprise club in this case, when there were legislative hearings on, for example, HB two four nine two, uh, when there are questions from other senators about what this bill would do.

[01:02:39] Speaker 06:
The question from the main sponsor was, well, let me let let me let Mr. Blackie, one of the main lobbyists, answer that question for you.

[01:02:47] Speaker 06:
And so in addition, so besides Free Enterprise Club, there are also a statement by Senator Borrelli to Senator Casada saying essentially, it's the people in your neighborhood that are doing this.

[01:02:56] Speaker 06:
That's why we need to pass these laws.

[01:02:58] Speaker 06:
Again, that was an accusation not of, oh, maybe you're someone who hasn't proven up to our satisfaction your citizenship, but it's someone who we think is breaking the law here.

[01:03:09] Speaker 06:
Without any evidence to prove that, there has been no evidence of non-citizen voting, except in a couple of cases over the last 20 years.

[01:03:18] Speaker 06:
And we have that on testimony from two attorney general.

[01:03:23] Speaker 06:
members of the Attorney General's office who worked on that specifically in this case.

[01:03:29] Speaker 06:
And I'm sorry.

[01:03:31] Speaker 01:
Well, isn't it another piece of your evidence that the legislature itself did an investigation into the 2020 presidential election and found that there was no fraud?

[01:03:44] Speaker 06:
That's correct, Your Honor.

[01:03:45] Speaker 06:
So these laws were passed in 2022.

[01:03:47] Speaker 06:
And of course, the election, November 2020 election happened.

[01:03:51] Speaker 06:
There was the speech by President Trump in January, 2021.

[01:03:55] Speaker 06:
And during that year, 2021, there was an audit, or it was called an audit, but it was a committee formed by the legislature to examine whether there was widespread or any kind of non-citizen voting occurring in Arizona, whether it had happened in 2020.

[01:04:11] Speaker 06:
And they simply found no evidence of that, Your Honor.

[01:04:14] Speaker 04:
That could cut the other way, though.

[01:04:15] Speaker 04:
It shows that the legislature is really concerned about voter integrity and election integrity.

[01:04:21] Speaker 04:
Just because they didn't find it in that particular instance suggests that they care about it.

[01:04:26] Speaker 06:
That's true, Your Honor.

[01:04:28] Speaker 06:
We wouldn't disagree that there was a genuine interest in that concern.

[01:04:32] Speaker 06:
However, there were interveners and defendants, and I see them over my time, but if I can answer this question.

[01:04:39] Speaker 06:
for their time.

[01:04:40] Speaker 01:
Join the club.

[01:04:41] Speaker 06:
Yes, Your Honor, thank you.

[01:04:43] Speaker 06:
Intervenors and defendants, especially defendants, make a big deal of the guidance that was issued after these laws were passed, and after, frankly, a month after we had this trial in this case.

[01:04:55] Speaker 06:
And this guidance helped, as the district court found and as the attorney general argues, helped clarify some issues in the statute that were lacking.

[01:05:08] Speaker 06:
However, there was guidance before these laws were passed that in addition to the existing law, in addition to the administrative actions and prosecution of voter fraud that existed to prevent non-citizen voting.

[01:05:24] Speaker 06:
So to go to pass a law in the form of HB 2243 that has provisions that

[01:05:31] Speaker 06:
functionally are almost facially discriminatory in how they function, that is not how you address a concern, something that's already in process of being addressed.

[01:05:41] Speaker 06:
So I hope that answers your question, Your Honor.

[01:05:44] Speaker 06:
Thank you.

[01:05:44] Speaker 06:
All right.

[01:05:45] Speaker 06:
And with that, I think I've gone over my time.

[01:05:47] Speaker 06:
But I will conclude that if it is the

[01:05:53] Speaker 06:
The district court required the plaintiffs to provide direct evidence of nefarious intent toward Latinos for every factor of Arlington Heights.

[01:06:01] Speaker 06:
So by requiring directed evidence, for example,

[01:06:06] Speaker 06:
Well, I'll conclude there, Your Honor.

[01:06:07] Speaker 06:
Just to say that the Arlington Heights test, its purpose is to look at circumstantial evidence, not direct evidence.

[01:06:14] Speaker 06:
And we believe that is where the district court erred.

[01:06:17] Speaker 06:
And we ask respectfully that this court reverse the district court's declining to find discriminatory intent.

[01:06:24] Speaker 01:
All right.

[01:06:24] Speaker 01:
Thank you, counsel.

[01:06:26] Speaker 01:
Mr. Langhofer, I think you saved some time.

[01:06:30] Speaker 03:
Thank you, Your Honors.

[01:06:31] Speaker 03:
A few observations.

[01:06:33] Speaker 03:
On boroughs.

[01:06:35] Speaker 03:
I think that the fairest characterization of boroughs is this.

[01:06:39] Speaker 03:
The corruption of the presidential selection process is existential to the union.

[01:06:45] Speaker 03:
It characterizes it that way.

[01:06:47] Speaker 03:
And therefore cannot be, corruption of the process cannot be exclusively state.

[01:06:52] Speaker 03:
Otherwise it does recognize it as a state power because the text of Article II says that.

[01:06:58] Speaker 03:
The 90-day blackout period, another textual point.

[01:07:02] Speaker 03:
In section A3 that says, you shall not remove a voter unless one of the following applies.

[01:07:09] Speaker 03:
A register.

[01:07:09] Speaker 03:
A register.

[01:07:11] Speaker 03:
Later in the exact same sentence, it describes it as an eligible voter.

[01:07:15] Speaker 03:
It uses the word eligible in A3.

[01:07:21] Speaker 03:
Your Honor had asked about Hippocratic medicine

[01:07:25] Speaker 03:
One of the things that you'll notice in the transcript if you look is that for every organizational plaintiff that took the stand to describe their basis for standing, they were asked the exact same question.

[01:07:35] Speaker 03:
All of them were asked the same question.

[01:07:36] Speaker 03:
It was this, are you aware of anyone in the state who is an adult citizen residing here and does not have Deepak?

[01:07:43] Speaker 03:
Have you ever found someone like that?

[01:07:45] Speaker 03:
And the total number of people they identified with all 60 lawyers and a year and a half of work was zero.

[01:07:53] Speaker 03:
It is the idea that they're diverting resources, as Hippocratic Medicine says, it's speculative and attenuated, with no apparent injury is really startling.

[01:08:05] Speaker 03:
One final observation.

[01:08:08] Speaker 03:
I have found this puzzling in the case.

[01:08:10] Speaker 03:
Both the district court and the plaintiffs repeatedly in their depositions and ultimately the ruling make the point that the county has never done this before, so it must be useless.

[01:08:23] Speaker 03:
They haven't used birthplace before, it must be useless, et cetera.

[01:08:27] Speaker 03:
It's puzzling to me because, first of all, the laws have never been implemented.

[01:08:29] Speaker 03:
There would be no cause to use it before.

[01:08:31] Speaker 03:
But second, that sort of silver bullet argument could kill every election reformer.

[01:08:35] Speaker 03:
You could say it about Crawford.

[01:08:36] Speaker 03:
Voter ID in Indiana was never used before you had to use it.

[01:08:39] Speaker 03:
Therefore, it's illegal, right?

[01:08:40] Speaker 03:
Bernabas, you never had a ban on ballot harvesting until you did.

[01:08:44] Speaker 03:
So therefore, you don't need it.

[01:08:46] Speaker 03:
That can't be the proper approach.

[01:08:47] Speaker 03:
It's not the doctrine.

[01:08:48] Speaker 03:
It's sort of a rhetorical gimmick, let's say.

[01:08:51] Speaker 03:
Unless there are questions, I'll sit down.

[01:08:53] Speaker 01:
All right.

[01:08:53] Speaker 01:
Thank you, Council.

[01:08:55] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[01:08:56] Speaker 01:
Mi Familia Vota vs. Arizona is submitted and this session of the court is adjourned for today.