Count Us in v. Diego Morales

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 26-1783
C OUNT US IN, et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
v.
D IEGO MORALES , et al.,
Defendants-Appellants.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.
No. 1:25-cv-00864-RLY-MKK — Richard L. Young, Judge .
____________________
SUBMITTED A PRIL 17, 2026 — D ECIDED A PRIL 20, 2026
____________________
Before BRENNAN, Chief Judge, and SCUDDER and KOLAR ,
Circuit Judges.
P ER C URIAM. Before us is an emergency motion from the
State of Indiana seeking to stay a preliminary injunction pro-
hibiting the application of a statutory provision impacting
voter eligibility. We grant the State’s motion.

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2 No. 26-1783
I
Since 2005, Indiana has required voters to present “proof
of identification” when casting a ballot in person. See Ind.
Code §§ 3-10-1-7.2(a), 3-11-8-25.1(a). For about twenty years,
the State accepted student IDs from state-run universities for
this purpose, provided they complied with statutory require-
ments applicable to all IDs used for voting. Many students
availed themselves of this option to vote in Indiana. In April
2025, however, the State enacted Senate Bill 10, which speci-
fies that proof of identification for voting no longer “in-
clude[s] a document issued by an educational institution.”
Ind. Code § 3-5-2.1-84(c).
The plaintiffs—two non-profit corporations dedicated to
voting rights and a current student at Indiana University
Bloomington—responded by filing this lawsuit in May 2025.
They sued state and local election officials, contending that
Senate Bill 10 imposes an unconstitutional burden on the right
to vote for young people in Indiana and intentionally discrim-
inates against young voters in violation of the Twenty-Sixth
Amendment. In February 2026, the plaintiffs moved for a pre-
liminary injunction seeking to forestall enforcement of Senate
Bill 10 in Indiana’s then-upcoming primary election.
Early voting in Indiana’s primary election started on April
7, 2026 without a ruling on the plaintiffs’ request for prelimi-
nary relief. Senate Bill 10 was in effect when voting began.
One week later, on April 14, the district court agreed with the
plaintiffs that Senate Bill 10 unduly burdens the constitutional
right to vote and enjoined the defendants from enforcing it,
including during the ongoing primary election. Indiana then
filed this emergency motion asking our court to stay the dis-
trict court’s injunction.

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No. 26-1783 3
We have appellate jurisdiction over the district court’s
grant of a preliminary injunction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1).
Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 8(a)(1) ordinarily re-
quires parties to first seek a stay of injunction in the district
court, but—with early voting underway and the May 5 pri-
mary election date fast approaching—we agree with Indiana
that it would be “impracticable” to do so here. See Fed. R.
App. P. 8(a)(2).
We also have no doubt that this remains a live case or con-
troversy. The student plaintiff, who seeks to cast a valid ballot
in Indiana elections relying on his school ID, has standing,
and it appears that one plaintiff organization,
Women4Change Indiana, has associational standing. See Mil-
waukee Police Ass’n v. Bd. of Fire & Police Comm’rs of the City of
Milwaukee, 708 F.3d 921, 928–29 (7th Cir. 2013).
Assured of these preliminaries, we turn to the State’s re-
quest.
II
We grant the State’s emergency motion to stay the district
court’s order pending appeal, heeding the Supreme Court’s
repeated admonition that “lower federal courts should ordi-
narily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.”
Republican Nat’l Comm. v. Democratic Nat’l Comm., 589 U.S. 423,
424 (2020) (per curiam). This principle, deriving its name from
Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1 (2006), recognizes that “[l]ate ju-
dicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and
to unanticipated and unfair consequences.” Merrill v. Milli-
gan, 142 S. Ct. 879, 881 (2022) (mem.) (Kavanaugh, J., concur-
ring); see also Purcell, 549 U.S. at 4–5 (“Court orders affecting
elections … can themselves result in voter confusion ….”).

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4 No. 26-1783
We view the risk of disruption to Indiana’s primary elec-
tion as very serious. In no uncertain terms, the district court’s
injunction will alter who can cast a ballot in this election. And
this change—imposed unilaterally by a federal court—comes
seven days after voting in the election has already begun. See
Merrill, 142 S. Ct. at 881 (emphasizing the particular risk when
“a federal court … swoop[s] in and re-do[es] a State’s election
laws in the period close to an election”) (Kavanaugh, J., con-
curring). To be sure, we are not saying that an injunction can
never issue while an election is ongoing, but we see this mid-
stream relief on what amounts to a matter of voter eligibility
as a clear violation of Purcell.
Whether we view the Purcell principle as displacing the
traditional factors for granting a stay, see Nken v. Holder, 556
U.S. 418, 426 (2009), or as an election-specific refinement of
the weighing of those factors, we conclude that our federal-
ism-related concerns are dispositive here, see Republican Nat’l
Comm., 589 U.S. at 425 (“[W]hen a lower court intervenes and
alters the election rules so close to the election date, our prec-
edents indicate that [an appellate court], as appropriate,
should correct that error.”).
For these reasons, we GRANT the State’s request for a stay
pending the resolution of this appeal. The court will enter a
separate order setting a briefing schedule on the State’s ap-
peal.

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