Rochelle M. Maly v. Illinois State Board of Elections

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Argued November 18, 2025
Decided December 5, 2025
Before
DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge
No. 24-2979
ROCHELLE M. MALY,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
ILLINOIS STATE BOARD OF
ELECTIONS, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 22-cv-04778
Andrea R. Wood,
Judge.
O R D E R
Rochelle Maly sued several Illinois officials alleging that the use of the electronic
voting systems in Illinois violates her civil rights. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court
dismissed Maly’s complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because she lacked
standing to challenge the voting system. Because Maly has not alleged an injury in fact,
we affirm.
Rochelle Maly is an active participant in politics. She has voted in every
presidential election for which she has been eligible, volunteered in the presidential
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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election in 2016, and served as an Iowa Caucus Captain and volunteer recount observer
in DuPage County. According to her complaint, in 2021 Maly had publicly expressed
interest in serving as a precinct committeeperson, poll watcher, or election judge, and
even running for office. But when she learned about the vulnerabilities of the electronic
voting system, she became convinced that “it is pointless when it is all rigged” and
disavowed pursuing those roles in the political process.
In September 2022, Maly filed this § 1983 suit against the Illinois State Board of
Elections and its members. She attached expert testimony that, she says, describes the
vulnerabilities present in all electronic voting systems (including Illinois’s) and explains
the systems’ susceptibility to vote manipulation. She alleged that this potential for
election interference violates her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and causes
her emotional harm, and she seeks injunctive and declarative relief to replace the
electronic voting systems in Illinois with “hand-counted secure paper ballot[s].”
The district court dismissed her complaint for lack of standing. The court
explained that Maly’s injuries are too speculative (because her complaint does not
allege facts about the risk of election interference specific to Illinois) and insufficiently
particularized (because any risk of election interference would affect all Illinois voters).
On appeal, Maly argues that her injuries are sufficiently concrete and
particularized to establish standing. Foremost among the requirements for standing is
an injury in fact, which consists of an “‘invasion of a legally protected interest’ that is
‘concrete and particularized,’ i.e., which ‘affect[s] the plaintiff in a personal and
individual way.’” Gill v. Whitford, 585 U.S. 48, 65 (2018) (quoting Lujan v. Defenders of
Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 & n.1 (1992)).
To the extent Maly thinks that the vulnerabilities in Illinois’s electronic voting
system violate her rights as a member of the Illinois electorate, she does not allege an
injury in fact because such a violation is not particular to her. A particularized injury
“must be personal, individual, and distinct, not general and undifferentiated.” Bost v.
Ill. State Bd. of Elections, 114 F.4th 634, 640 (7th Cir. 2024), cert. granted, 145 S. Ct. 2751
(2025) (No. 24-568). While voters have standing to sue when they “allege facts showing
disadvantage to themselves as individuals,” they lack standing when their claim of injury
is statewide. Gill, 585 U.S. at 65–67 (emphasis added) (quoting Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S.
186, 206 (1962)); Bost, 114 F.4th at 641. Here, Maly’s claim—that the electronic voting
system in Illinois allows for vote manipulation—affects all Illinois voters and is
therefore “a generalized grievance that cannot support standing ‘no matter how
sincere.’” Bost, 114 F.4th at 640 (quoting Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570 U.S. 693, 706 (2013)).

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No. 24-2979 Page 3
Maly also argues that her injury is concrete because she dropped her aspirations
to hold an election-related position upon learning of the vulnerabilities in the electronic
voting systems. This, too, is insufficient to allege an injury in fact. An injury must be
“certainly impending” rather than merely possible. Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l, 568 U.S.
398, 409 (2013) (quotation omitted). The risk of the Illinois voting machines getting
hacked is hypothetical, not certainly impending. See Food & Drug Admin. v. All. for
Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. 367, 383 (2024) (speculation about “unfettered choices made
by independent actors” too attenuated for causation requirement of standing). And
Maly cannot “manufacture standing merely by inflicting harm on [herself] based on
[her] fears of hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending.” Clapper,
568 U.S. at 416.
Maly further contends that she satisfied the standing requirements by alleging an
emotional injury. In her complaint, she traced her emotional harm to her realization that
the voting process is “rigged.” We have recognized emotional harm as a concrete injury
only in limited contexts. Compare Gracia v. SigmaTron Int’l, Inc., 986 F.3d 1058, 1064
(7th Cir. 2021) (“humiliation, embarrassment, and like injuries” constitute cognizable
and compensable harms in Title VII retaliation context), with Baysal v. Midvale Indem.
Co., 78 F.4th 976, 977 (7th Cir. 2023) (“worry and anxiety” are not concrete injuries in
credit disclosure context). Regardless, Maly may not skirt the injury-in-fact requirement
by framing her general disagreement with Illinois’s vote-counting process as an
emotional harm. See Food & Drug. Admin., 602 U.S. at 381 (“Article III standing screens
out plaintiffs who might have only a general legal, moral, ideological, or policy
objection to a particular government action.”).
In her reply brief and at oral argument, Maly recasts her injury as harming her
First Amendment right to associate with her political party. But arguments made for the
first time in a reply brief or at oral argument are waived. White v. United States, 8 F.4th
547, 552 (7th Cir. 2021) (reply brief); Quality Oil, Inc. v. Kelley Partners, Inc., 657 F.3d 609,
614–15 (7th Cir. 2011) (oral argument). Regardless, Maly’s connections to the political
process do not transform her speculative and generalized harm into a concrete,
imminent injury.
Finally, Maly argues that she has standing because of the heightened public
interest in assuring the integrity of the electoral process. Because the state has a
compelling interest in a properly functioning electoral process, she asserts, threats to the
process ought to relax the standard to establish standing. But “[t]he assumption that if
[Maly] ha[s] no standing to sue, no one would have standing, is not a reason to find

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standing.” Clapper, 568 U.S. at 420 (first alteration in original) (quoting Valley Forge
Christian Coll. v. Ams. United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 489
(1982)). The importance of an issue does not relieve a plaintiff from the requirements of
establishing standing.
AFFIRMED

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