Public Interest Legal Foundation, Inc. v. Meyer

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF ALASKA
PUBLIC INTEREST LEGAL
FOUNDATION, INC.,
Plaintiff,
v.
KEVIN MEYER, in his official capacity
as Lieutenant Governor for the State
of Alaska,
Defendant.
Case No. 1:22-CV-00001-SLG
ORDER RE: MOTION TO INTERVENE
Before the Court at Docket 13 is Movants Loy A. Thurman, Thomas W. Oels,
David H. Johnson, William C. de Schweinitz, and Pamela L. Bickford’s Motion to
Intervene as “We the People of the State of Alaska Plaintiff-Intervenors.” Plaintiff
responded in opposition at Docket 14; Defendant responded in opposition at
Docket 18. Movants replied at Docket 20. Oral argument was not requested and
was not necessary to the Court’s determination.
After reviewing the parties’ filings, the Court concludes that Movants do not
have valid grounds for intervention. First, Movants are not entitled to intervene of
right. Rule 24(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires district courts to
allow a party to intervene as a matter of right if the party “claims an interest relating
to the property or transaction that is the subject of an action, and is so situated that
disposing of the action may as a practical matter impair or impede the movant’s
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Order re Motion to Intervene
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ability to protect its interest, unless existing parties adequately represent that
interest.” This rule requires motions to intervene of right to satisfy the following
four-part test:
(1) the motion must be timely; (2) the applicant must claim a
significantly protectable interest relating to the property or transaction
which is the subject of the action; (3) the applicant must be so situated
that the disposition of the action may as a practical matter impair or
impede its ability to protect that interest; and (4) the applicant’s
interest must be inadequately represented by the parties to the
action.2
Prospective intervenors bear the burden of establishing each of these
elements, although “the requirements for intervention are [to be] broadly
interpreted in favor of intervention.”3
In this case, Movants’ motion fails to satisfy element (2) of the test, because
the Movants have no significantly protectable interest in the subject matter of this
litigation. For the purposes of intervention of right, an interest is significantly
protectable if it is “protected by law” and has a “relationship” with the claims at
issue.4 “A significantly protectable interest will be found if a legally protected
interest will suffer a practical impairment in the pending litigation.”6
2 Wilderness Soc’y v. U.S. Forest Serv., 630 F.3d 1173, 1177 (9th Cir. 2011) (en banc) (internal
quotations omitted) (quoting Sierra Club v. U.S. E.P.A., 995 F.2d 1478, 1481 (9th Cir. 1993)).
3 Smith v. L.A. Unified Sch. Dist., 830 F.3d 843, 853 (9th Cir. 2016) (alteration in original) (quoting
United States v. Alisal Water Corp., 370 F.3d 915, 919 (9th Cir. 2004)).
4 Cooper v. Newsom, 13 F.4th 857, 865 (9th Cir. 2021).
6 Id.
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Movants have established no such interest here. According to their motion,
Movants seek “the Official Alaska State Voter Registration List that the Alaska
Division of Elections distributed to Precincts and political parties prior to Election
Day of November 2020.”7 But Plaintiff seeks only “‘ERIC Data’ received from ERIC
during the years 2019, 2020, and 2021 concerning registered voters identified as
deceased or potentially deceased” and “reports and/or statewide-voter-
registration-system-generated lists showing all registrants removed from the list of
eligible voters for reason of death for the years 2019, 2020, and 2021.”8 Movants
have not demonstrated any meaningful relationship between the “Official Alaska
State Voter Registration List” they seek and the ERIC data and reports on
potentially deceased voters that Plaintiff seeks. Nor have Movants explained how
Plaintiff’s success or failure in this case might impair or affect their ability to obtain
the “Official Alaska State Voter Registration.” Consequently, the Court concludes
that Movants have not established the existence of any significantly protectable
interest relating to the subject of this action.
For the same reasons, the Court also concludes that Movants have not
established that the disposition of the present action will impede or impair their
ability to protect their interest, if any, in the “Official Alaska State Voter Registration
7 Docket 13 at 2.
8 Docket 1 at 10, ¶ 31.
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List” as a practical matter.9 This failure to establish elements (2) and (3) is fatal to
Movants’ motion to intervene of right under Rule 24(a).
The Court also declines to grant Movants’ motion for permissive
intervention. Rule 24(b) allows a district court to permit a party to intervene
permissively if the party either “is given a conditional right to intervene by a federal
statute” or “has a claim or defense that shares with the main action a common
question of law or fact.”10
In this case, Movants have neither. Movants identify no federal statute
giving them a conditional right to intervene, nor do they identify any claim or
defense that shares a common question of law or fact with Plaintiff’s claim, even
though both Movants and Plaintiff invoke the National Voter Registration Act
(NVRA). The NVRA requires that States make their records on voter registration
activities available for public inspection and copying.11 This requirement applies
to “all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted
for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible
9 See Cooper, 13 F.4th at 865 (quoting Wright & Miller, 7C Fed. Prac. & Proc. § 1908 (3d ed. 2020
update) (“The four parts of the test ‘often are very interrelated and the ultimate conclusion reached
as to whether intervention is of right may reflect that relationship.’”).
10 Fed. R. Civ. P. 24(b)(1)(A)-(B); see also Nw. Forest Res. Council v. Glickman, 82 F.3d 825, 839
(9th Cir. 1996) (“We have held that a court may grant permissive intervention where the applicant
for intervention shows: (1) independent grounds for jurisdiction; (2) the motion is timely; and (3)
the applicant’s claim or defense, and the main action, have a question of law or a question of fact
in common.”).
11 52 U.S.C. § 20507(i)(1).
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voters.”12 Adjudicating NRVA lawsuits normally involves determining whether
particular records, data, or procedures fall under this statutory definition. Such
determinations are usually fact-intensive and particularized to the nature of the
records at issue.13
Under this paradigm, Movants’ and Plaintiff’s claims would likely have no
common questions of fact or law. The records Plaintiff seeks are records provided
to the State of Alaska by a third party for the purpose of voter list maintenance. In
contrast, the records Movants seek consist of a State-generated list that contains
the entirety of the registered voter population in Alaska as of November 2020.
Determining whether such a list falls under the NVRA’s statutory definition of
records relating to voter registration activities is unlikely to have any common
questions of fact or law with a similar determination regarding the ERIC data
Plaintiff seeks. Therefore, the Court declines to permit Movants to permissively
intervene in the present case.
Lastly, Movants’ motion is also procedurally defective because it is not
“accompanied by a pleading that sets out the claim or defense for which
intervention is sought,” as Rule 24(c) requires. But even if Movants had attached
12 Id.
13 See, e.g., Project Vote/Voting for Am., Inc., 682 F.3d 331, 335–41 (4th Cir. 2012); Judicial
Watch, Inc. v. Lamone, 399 F. Supp. 3d 425, 434–42 (D. Md. 2019); Project Vote, Inc. v. Kemp,
208 F. Supp. 3d 1320, 1135–46 (N.D. Ga. 2016); Bellitto v. Snipes, 221 F. Supp. 3d 1354, 1360–
66 (S.D. Fla. 2016); Project Vote/Voting for Am., Inc. v. Long, 752 F. Supp. 2d 697, 704–12 (E.D.
Va. 2010).
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the required pleading, the Court would still deny their motion for the reasons
described in this Order.
For these reasons, the Motion to Intervene at Docket 13 is DENIED.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
DATED this 13th day of April, 2022, at Anchorage, Alaska.
/s/ Sharon L. Gleason
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
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