It’s only been three days since Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was named Vice President Harris’s running mate, but Republicans have been working overtime to paint the mild-mannered Midwesterner as the bastard child of Leon Trotsky and Gloria Steinem.
Luckily, they’ve got their best minds on the job.
Rightwing news sites are busily pumping out listicles of all the terrifying things “Tampon Tim” Walz has done to turn the Land of 10,000 Lakes into a terrifying socialist hellscape.
Enshrined a fundamental right to abortion in law! Enacted automatic voter registration! Legalized recreational marijuana!
They are also BIG MAD that he signed a law restoring felon voting rights, a law which is in the news today thanks to a decision by the state’s highest court rebuffing a challenge by Republican activists under the moniker ‘The Minnesota Voters Alliance.”
In June of 2023, the plaintiffs sued to enjoin the Re-Enfranchisement Act, enacted in March of that year. The statute reads, in relevant part:
An individual who is ineligible to vote because of a felony conviction has the civil right to vote restored during any period when the individual is not incarcerated for the offense. If the individual is later incarcerated for the offense, the individual’s civil right to vote is lost only during that period of incarceration.
The plaintiffs’ argument is that Article VII of the Minnesota Constitution bars voting by “a person who has been convicted of treason or felony, unless restored to civil rights,” and “civil rights” must mean “all civil rights.” And so, they argue, if a non-incarcerated felon is barred from jury service or has to check in with his parole officer before traveling, then it’s illegal for the legislature to allow him to vote.
The plaintiffs did not explain how they would be harmed by returning the franchise to 50,000 Minnesota citizens who have served their time. Instead they relied on the enabling legislation, which appropriated a whopping $214,000 to register exiting offenders and slap up posters at polling places. The plaintiffs seized on this piddly expenditure as giving them taxpayer standing for a quo warranto action, demanding that the trial court enjoin the law. At the very least they hoped to block the use of tax dollars to tell formerly incarcerated citizens that they are once again allowed to participate in their own governance.
The trial court found that this bootstrapped theory of standing as a pretextual basis to challenge a disfavored policy would defeat the entire purpose of a standing requirement, and the high court agreed.
We share the district court’s concern that granting taxpayer standing in this case “would render the very concept of taxpayer standing meaningless” because “practically every law entails at least some public expenditure.” We can discern no principled limitation to the theory of taxpayer standing advanced by the Taxpayers that would prevent the concept of taxpayer standing from becoming meaningless by allowing parties to challenge substantive government acts that involve incidental expenditures. We instead hold that when standing would not otherwise exist to challenge a substantive law, a taxpayer cannot manufacture standing by pointing to expenditures that are incidental to implementing the law. For the reasons stated above, we conclude that the Taxpayers lack standing.
And so this experiment with godless socialism will continue until Republicans can come up with a plaintiff who is legitimately harmed by allowing people to vote.
Bueller … Bueller …
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
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