In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ Nos. 18-2491, 18-2492 COMMON CAUSE INDIANA, INDIANA STATE CONFERENCE OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, and LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF INDIANA, INC., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CONNIE LAWSON, in her official capacity as Secretary of State of Indiana, et al., Defendants-Appellants. ____________________ Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division. Nos. 1:17-cv-03936-TWP-MPB, 1:17-cv-02897-TWP-MPB — Tanya Walton Pratt, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED JANUARY 14, 2019 — DECIDED AUGUST 27, 2019 ____________________ Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and BRENNAN and ST. EVE, Cir- cuit Judges. WOOD, Chief Judge. Voting is at once an intensely personal act and a choice to participate in the collective process of rep- resentative democracy. It cannot take place, however, without 2 Nos. 18-2491 & 18-2492 an elaborate administrative infrastructure. This case concerns that machinery—in particular, the process that Indiana wants to use to cleanse its voter rolls of people it suspects no longer qualify to vote there. Senate Enrolled Act 442 (“Act 442”), which was passed in 2017 and codified at Indiana Code § 3-7- 38.2-5(d)–(e), adopted an aggressive new strategy for this pur- pose, allowing Indiana immediately to remove a voter based on information received from a third-party database rather than in response to direct contact with the voter. Several or- ganizations promptly challenged Act 442 in court, asserting in two separate actions that it violates the National Voter Reg- istration Act. They sought a preliminary injunction against the implementation of the new law while both cases pro- ceeded. Finding that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits and that they would suffer irreparable injury if the law were to take effect immediately, the district court issued preliminary injunctions “prohibiting the Defendants from taking any actions to implement [Act 442]” until the cases are concluded. The state appealed the injunctions to this court, see 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1), and we consolidated the two cases for de- cision. We conclude that the plaintiff organizations in each case adequately demonstrated their standing to bring these actions and that the district court did not abuse its discretion by granting preliminary relief. We therefore affirm. I A It is largely the responsibility of the states to set up and operate the machinery necessary for voting. Article I, section 4, clause 1, of the federal Constitution allows state legislatures Nos. 18-2491 & 18-2492 3 to prescribe the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding elec- tions for U.S. senators and representatives. Nonetheless, the federal Constitution places certain limits on the states’ choices. Several amendments protect the franchise of certain groups (the Fifteenth, for racial groups; the Nineteenth, for women; and the Twenty-Sixth, for those who have reached age 18), while another amendment assures that a poll tax can- not stand in the way of voting (the Twenty-Fourth). Im- portantly, however, the case before us does not present an is- sue under any of those amendments. It turns instead on one ...
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