Dawn Keefer v. President United States of America

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
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No. 24-1716
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DAWN KEEFER; TIMOTHY BONNER; BARRY JOZWIAK; BARBARA GLEIM;
JOSEPH HAMM; WENDY FINK; ROBERT KAUFFMAN; STEPHANIE
BOROWICZ; DONALD (BUD) COOK; PAUL (MIKE) JONES; JOSEPH D’ORSIE;
CHARITY KRUPA; LESLIE ROSSI; DAVID ZIMMERMAN; ROBERT
LEADBETER; DANIEL MOUL; THOMAS JONES; DAVID MALONEY; TIMOTHY
TWARDZIK; DAVID ROWE; JOANNE STEHR; AARON BERNSTINE; KATHY
RAPP; REPRESENTATIVE MARK GILLEN; REPRESENTATIVE JILL COOPER;
REPRESENTATIVE MARLA BROWN; SENATOR CRIS DUSH,
All Pennsylvania Legislators,
Appellants
v.
PRESIDENT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA;
SECRETARY COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA; DEPUTY SECRETARY
ELECTIONS COMMISSIONS; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; SECRETARY; UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES; SECRETARY
PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES; UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF STATE; SECRETARY PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF
STATE; UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN
DEVELOPMENT; UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY; SECRETARY;
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION; SECRETARY UNITED
STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
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On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. No. 1:24-cv-00147)
District Judge: Honorable Jennifer P. Wilson
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Argued: January 16, 2025
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Before: PHIPPS, FREEMAN, and CHUNG, Circuit Judges

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(Filed: March 4, 2025)
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Erick G. Kaardal [ARGUED]
Elizabeth A. Nielsen
MOHRMAN K AARDAL & E RICKSON
150 S 5th Street, Suite 3100
Minneapolis, MN 55402
Counsel for Appellants
McKaye L. Neumeister [ARGUED]
Jeffrey E. Sandberg
Daniel Tenny
UNITED STATES D EPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
CIVIL D IVISION
Room 7231
950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20530
Counsel for Appellee President United States of America
Jacob B. Boyer [ARGUED]
O FFICE OF A TTORNEY G ENERAL OF PENNSYLVANIA
O FFICE OF G ENERAL COUNSEL
30 North Third Street, Suite 200
Harrisburg, PA 17101
Counsel for Appellee Governor of Pennsylvania
Robert J. Muise
T HE MUISE L AW G ROUP
P.O. Box 131098
Ann Arbor, MI 48113
Counsel for Amici Members of Congress in Support of Appellants

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Thomas E. Breth
Thomas W. King, III
D ILLON MC CANDLESS K ING COULTER & G RAHAM
128 W Cunningham Street
Butler, PA 16001
Counsel for Amici States of West Virginia, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana,
Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, and Wyoming in Support of Appellants
David J. Craig
FOUNDATION FOR G OVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY
15275 Collier Boulevard, Suite 201
Naples, FL 53103
Counsel for Amicus Foundation for Government Accountability in Support of
Appellants
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OPINION*
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PHIPPS, Circuit Judge.
Two clauses in the Constitution confer certain powers regarding the regulation of
federal elections to state legislatures. The Elections Clause gives initial responsibility to
state legislatures over the regulation of elections for the United States Congress:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and
Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof;
but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations,
except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
U.S. Const. art. I, § 4, cl. 1. The Electors Clause allows state legislatures to direct the
manner of appointing electors to the Electoral College:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may
direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and
Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no
* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not
constitute binding precedent.

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Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit
under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 2.
Consistent with those clauses and the Pennsylvania Constitution,1 the Pennsylvania
General Assembly has regulated voter registration in the Commonwealth for elections to
both federal and state offices. In 2002, the General Assembly mandated the rejection of
incomplete or inconsistent voter-registration applications if, after reasonable efforts,
necessary information could not be ascertained. See 25 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 1328(b)(2)(i)
(2002) (amended 2020). Twenty years later, in 2022, the General Assembly limited voter-
registration expenditures within the Commonwealth to funding from lawful governmental
appropriations – those “derived from taxes, fees and other sources of public revenue.”
25 Pa. Stat. § 2607(a). Additionally, in 2023, the Pennsylvania Senate’s State Government
Committee considered, but did not bring to the floor, Senate Bill 40, which would have
allowed automatic voter registration throughout the Commonwealth. See S.B. 40,
207th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Pa. 2023).
Twenty-seven members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly allege that on three
occasions, governmental actors – other than Congress2 – have also regulated elections in
Pennsylvania. In 2018, the Pennsylvania Department of State instructed counties not to
reject voter registrations solely based on a mismatch between an applicant’s presented
1 Pa. Const. art. VII, § 1 (“Every citizen 21 years of age, possessing the following
qualifications, shall be entitled to vote at all elections subject, however, to such laws
requiring and regulating the registration of electors as the General Assembly may enact.”);
cf. U.S. Const. amend. XXVI (“The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen
years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
State on account of age.”).
2 Cf. U.S. Const. art. I, § 4, cl. 1 (providing Congress with ultimate authority over the
regulation of congressional elections except with respect “to the Places of chusing of
Senators”); U.S. Const. amend. XVII (requiring the election of Senators “by the people”
of each state qualified to vote for “the most numerous branch of the State legislatures”).

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driver’s license number or Social Security number and the corresponding numbers for that
applicant in state or federal databases. On March 7, 2021, President Joseph R. Biden issued
an executive order directing the “head of each [federal] agency [to] evaluate ways . . . [to]
promote voter registration” throughout the country, and several federal agencies took
affirmative action in response to that order. Exec. Order No. 14019, Promoting Access to
Voting, 86 Fed. Reg. 13623, 13623 (Mar. 7, 2021).3 And on September 19, 2023, even
though the General Assembly had not enacted a similar proposal in Senate Bill 40,
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced that automatic voter registration would be
implemented for driver’s license and state ID card applicants in Pennsylvania Department
of Transportation centers.
The twenty-seven state legislators believe that those actions infringe on the General
Assembly’s constitutional prerogative over the regulation of federal elections in
Pennsylvania. On February 16, 2024, they filed an amended complaint, suing President
Biden, the United States, six federal agencies, their heads, Governor Shapiro, and two state
officials, in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The
defendants moved to dismiss on several grounds, and the District Court dismissed the case
based on the legislators’ lack of Article III standing. See Keefer v. Biden, 725 F. Supp. 3d
491, 494 (M.D. Pa. 2024). Through a timely notice of appeal of that final decision, the
legislators invoked this Court’s appellate jurisdiction, and they now contest that ruling. See
28 U.S.C. § 1291. On de novo review, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court
for the reasons below.
3 On January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued an Executive Order rescinding
President Biden’s Executive Order 14019. See Exec. Order No. 14148, Initial Rescissions
of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions, 90 Fed. Reg. 8237, 8238 (Jan. 20, 2025).

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A party seeking to invoke the limited jurisdiction of a federal court bears the burden
of establishing Article III standing. See Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 338 (2016).
To do so, a plaintiff must make three showings: (i) an injury-in-fact that is concrete,
particularized, and actual or imminent; (ii) fair traceability between the injury-in-fact and
the defendant’s challenged conduct; and (iii) the likely redressability of the injury-in-fact
through a favorable judicial decision. See Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488,
493 (2009).
To meet that burden, the legislators assert an individual injury derived from the loss
of the General Assembly’s institutional power to regulate federal elections in Pennsylvania.
As a benchmark, no party disputes that if the General Assembly would have initiated this
suit, then it would satisfy the elements for Article III standing. See Ariz. State Legislature
v. Ariz. Indep. Redistricting Comm’n, 576 U.S. 787, 803–04 (2015) (concluding that both
houses of the Arizona State Legislature had standing to challenge the transfer of its federal
electoral regulatory power to an independent commission created by a citizen initiative).
But the General Assembly is not a plaintiff in this suit – the plaintiffs are twenty-seven
legislators. And under this Court’s binding precedent, “individual legislators lack standing
to assert institutional injuries belonging to the legislature as a whole.” Yaw v. Del. River
Basin Comm’n, 49 F.4th 302, 311 (3d Cir. 2022); see also Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811,
821 (1997) (holding that individual members of Congress lack standing to sue to protect
the interests of Congress); cf. Va. House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill, 587 U.S. 658, 664
(2019) (holding that one house of a state’s bicameral legislature that was not otherwise
authorized to litigate on behalf of the state lacked standing to defend the constitutionality
of state legislation).4
4 The legislators dispute this conclusion based on Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939).
That case involved a proposed constitutional amendment that was pending ratification “by

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Without the ability to rely on the institutional injury to the General Assembly as a
basis for standing, the only remaining grievance that the legislators assert is an interest that
governmental officials follow the Constitution.5 But the injury-in-fact element requires a
particularized injury, see Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 339, and without more, an interest in the
constitutional administration of government is “a nonjusticiable ‘general interest common
to all members of the public,’” Gill v. Whitford, 585 U.S. 48, 68 (2018) (quoting Ex parte
Levitt, 302 U.S. 633, 634 (1937) (per curiam)); see also Valley Forge Christian Coll. v.
Ams. United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 482–83 (1982)
(“[C]laims of standing predicated on ‘the right, possessed by every citizen, to require that
the Government be administered according to law’ . . . amount to little more than . . .
‘generalized grievances about the conduct of government.’” (first quoting Baker v. Carr,
369 U.S. 186, 208 (1962); and then quoting Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 106 (1968)));
Russell v. DeJongh, 491 F.3d 130, 135 (3d Cir. 2007) (“[O]nce a bill has become law, a
the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States,” U.S. Const. art. V, and individual
legislators from Kansas claimed that their votes against ratification had “been overridden
and virtually held for naught,” Coleman, 307 U.S. at 438, because the Lieutenant Governor
participated in and cast the tie-breaking vote for Kansas with respect to that proposed
constitutional amendment, see id. at 446–47. Here, however, the legislators do not
challenge the process for voting on any piece of legislation; instead, they claim that other
governmental actors have infringed on the rights conferred upon state legislatures by the
Constitution. Binding precedent, however, precludes Article III standing for legislators
who sue individually to vindicate the institutional interests of a legislature. See Yaw,
49 F.4th at 311; see also Raines, 521 U.S. at 821, 824.
5 In District Court, the legislators pursued a theory of candidate standing. See, e.g., Davis
v. FEC, 554 U.S. 724, 734–35 (2008) (holding candidate had suffered an injury in the form
of increased campaign expenditures from a law that would “allow[] his opponents to
receive contributions on more favorable terms”); Belitskus v. Pizzingrilli, 343 F.3d 632,
641 (3d Cir. 2003) (suggesting that a law’s impact “on [a] candidate’s campaign strategy
and allocation of resources” may be “sufficient to satisfy the requirements of Article III”
standing (citing Becker v. FEC, 230 F.3d 381, 386–87 (1st Cir. 2000))). They do not press
that argument on appeal.

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legislator’s interest in seeing that the law is followed is no different from a private citizen’s
general interest in proper government.”).
For these reasons, the legislators have failed to establish Article III standing to
pursue claims based on institutional injury to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, and we
will affirm the judgment of the District Court.

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