Fair Elections Ohio v. Jon Husted, 770 F.3d 456

Background

Ohio requires absentee ballot requests for conventional absentee voting to be received by 6:00 PM on the Friday before Election Day (or by mail earlier), with special confined-voter procedures allowing applications up to 90 days before the election and two-person teams to collect ballots from confined voters.
Ohio provides a special late-hospital voting procedure (absentee application delivered by 3:00 PM on Election Day) for voters confined by unforeseen medical emergencies, including family-member delivery or a bipartisan board team; no equivalent exists for persons confined in jail after the absentee-request deadline.
The practical effect: people arrested or jailed after the Friday 6:00 PM deadline who remain confined through Election Day and who have not already used an absentee method cannot vote.
The AMOS Project, an organization that conducts voter outreach, sued Ohio, alleging disparate treatment of late-jailed voters (Equal Protection, Due Process, Voting Rights Act, and Seventeenth Amendment) and sought injunctive and declaratory relief.
The district court found AMOS had standing (resource diversion to retrain volunteers and inform members), then granted summary judgment for plaintiffs on the merits.
The Sixth Circuit majority vacated and remanded to dismiss for lack of standing, concluding AMOS failed to show an Article III injury in fact and could not assert third-party voting rights; the dissent would have found standing and affirmed the merits ruling.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Article III standing — organizational injury	AMOS: it diverted limited resources to retrain volunteers and inform members about risk of arrest before Election Day, constituting a concrete injury.	State: AMOS’s alleged harms (incomplete materials, training time) are not Article III injuries or are self-inflicted/too speculative and not fairly traceable to the State.	No standing — AMOS failed to show an injury in fact fairly traceable to defendants and redressable by the court.
Representational/third-party standing	AMOS: asserts it represents voters harmed by the law and can sue to protect their voting rights.	State: organizations generally cannot raise rights of unidentified third parties absent close relationship or hindrance; AMOS lacks such a relationship and identifiable members.	Third-party standing limit bars AMOS from asserting rights of unidentified late-jailed voters.
Redressability of requested relief	AMOS: injunctive relief would enable its volunteers and members to vote or change procedures to remedy the injury.	State: even if procedures changed, AMOS’s alleged injuries (retraining, materials) would persist or be speculative; plaintiff seeks only to enforce public policy rather than obtain concrete relief.	Redressability not established because alleged injuries are informational/organizational and would not be meaningfully remedied by the relief sought.
Distinguishing precedent on organizational standing	AMOS: cases like Havens, Browning, Crawford, and Connor Group support standing where organizations divert resources to combat challenged laws.	State: those cases are distinguishable (Havens/Connor were damages / direct interference with core organizational missions; Browning/Crawford concerned identifiable member harms).	Majority: precedents are distinguishable; AMOS’s asserted harms insufficient. Dissent disagrees, citing these cases as controlling.

Key Cases Cited

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992) (standing requires concrete injury, causation, and redressability)
Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363 (1982) (organizational diversion of resources can constitute injury for standing)
Kowalski v. Tesmer, 543 U.S. 125 (2004) (prudential limit: generally cannot assert third-party rights absent close relationship or hindrance)
City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95 (1983) (standing for damages does not automatically confer standing for injunctive relief)
Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 472 F.3d 949 (7th Cir. 2007) (political party found to have standing where law discouraged or prevented members from voting)
Florida State Conference of NAACP v. Browning, 522 F.3d 1153 (11th Cir. 2008) (organizational standing where members would likely face burdens correcting registration mismatches)
Miami Fair Hous. Ctr., Inc. v. Connor Grp., 725 F.3d 571 (6th Cir. 2013) (organizational diversion-of-resources standing in FHA damages context)
Greater Cincinnati Coal. for the Homeless v. City of Cincinnati, 56 F.3d 710 (6th Cir. 1995) (harm to abstract social interests insufficient for standing)
Sandusky County Dem. Party v. Blackwell, 387 F.3d 565 (6th Cir. 2004) (organizations had representational standing to challenge election regulations affecting members)
Am. Canoe Ass’n v. City of Louisa Water & Sewer Comm’n, 389 F.3d 536 (6th Cir. 2004) (organizations suffer standing when defendants’ conduct prevents performance of daily operations)
Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490 (1975) (Article III relief is limited to redressing injury to the complaining party)