BREAKING: Judge REFUSES To Throw Out Challenges To New Arizona Laws Purging Voter Registration Rolls (READ Order)

In a detailed 35-page Order this afternoon, federal Judge Susan Bolton has refused to dismiss several (consolidated) challenges to the Legislature's laws forcing counties to further purge voter registration rolls and creating confusion for many longtime voters.

Several non-profits, sovereign Native American nations, and the U.S. filed actions against last year's HB2492 and HB2243, claiming that the citizenship verification requirements were discriminatory and arbitrary, and would illegally disenfranchise thousands of voters (among other arguments).

In September - before Democrat Kris Mayes was elected to replace Republican Mark Brnovich as Attorney General, Arizona moved to dismiss the lawsuits.  Today's Order denied that Motion, finding that - the various parties had standing to bring the actions and had presented sufficiently supported allegations to move on.

The parties have already been engaged in volleys of discovery, and most of Arizona's 15 counties recently promised the court that they had not yet engaged in removing anyone from the voter rolls.

Bolton found that most of the Plaintiffs' claims are "plausible" and that it would be inappropriate to dismiss them now because of the intensive fact-finding involved. She did dismiss "freestanding" allegations of violations of procedural due process, but will consider such allegations that are analyzed under a previously-determined ("Anderson-Burdick") framework.

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