HARRISBURG — Two dozen Pennsylvania lawmakers filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against President Joe Biden, Gov. Josh Shapiro and the commonwealth Department of State alleging they violated the U.S. Constitution when enacting election-related changes without legislative approval.
Members of the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus, an offshoot of the House Republican Caucus, are the plaintiffs. Led by Rep. Dawn Keefer, R-York, there are 24 in all including representatives Aaron Bernstine, Tim Bonner, Stephanie Borowicz, Kathy Rapp, David Rowe and Joanne Stehr.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The plaintiffs are represented by the Minneapolis-based law firm of Mohrman, Kaardal, & Erickson, which filed a similar suit in Michigan and was involved in previous litigation challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“The citizens of Pennsylvania have been victimized by extraordinary overreach of executive officials who have made changes to election laws with no authority to do so. If we don’t take action to stop this, there is no limit to the changes they might make to further erode Pennsylvania’s election system in 2024 and beyond,” Keefer said.
The lawsuit alleges violations of the Elections and Electors clauses of the U.S. Constitution, claiming decisions made by the defendants disrupted the authority of state legislatures to enact changes to how elections are administered through the law-making process.
They accuse Shapiro of violating the Constitution when he authorized a shift in September establishing automatic registration at PennDOT driver’s license and photo ID centers. Beginning Sept. 19, Pennsylvania changed from an opt-in to an opt-out process.
When visitors to the centers seek a new license or update their existing information, for example, the voter registration process now automatically begins with the option to opt out. For about 30 years prior to that, visitors were asked if they’d like to opt in for the registration process.
Pennsylvania’s Elections and Voter Registration Act requires simultaneous voter registration with driver’s license applications. The state law empowers the respective secretaries of PennDOT and the Commonwealth, who oversees elections, to determine the format of the application process.
“The format of the driver’s license/voter registration application shall be determined and prescribed by the (Department of State) secretary and the Secretary of Transportation,” the law states.
Entering 2024, according to state data, “motor voter” registrants most often chose to register as independents. That selection was followed in order by Republican and then Democratic registrations.
“It is abundantly clear that Governor Shapiro’s commonsense action to securely streamline voter registration and enhance election security is within the Administration’s authority. Any suggestion that the Administration lacks the authority to implement automatic voter registration is frivolous. This Administration looks forward to once again defending our democracy in court against those advancing extreme, undemocratic legal theories,” Manuel Bonder, Shapiro’s spokesman, said.
The lawsuit challenges an executive order issued by Biden in 2021 that empowered agency heads to further promote voting and voter registration. The lawsuit alleges that the order’s directive to seek third-party non-governmental agencies and state officials to provide voter registration services not only violates the referenced clauses in the Constitution but also conflicts with a Pennsylvania law that bars third-party entities from funding elections.
The lawsuit also challenges a 2018 directive from the Department of State that, citing federal law, instructs election officials not to reject registration applications solely on a mismatch between personal identifying numbers on the application and what’s on record in a state database. Current Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a defendant in the lawsuit, wasn’t in that position at the time of the directive.
The plaintiffs ask the federal court to rule that the actions by the defendants are unconstitutional, to enjoin them from taking any action that subverts state election law, and to prohibit them from taking similar actions in the future.