In a case involving a state constitutional challenge to Washington's absentee ballot signature matching requirement, the State Democracy Research Initiative filed an amicus brief urging the Washington Supreme Court to reject the federal Anderson-Burdick standard and apply heightened scrutiny to laws that impair the right to vote. On March 6, 2025, the Washington Supreme Court held that the signature matching process did not violate the Washington Constitution.
In 2022, civic organizations and Washington voters alleged that Washington's absentee ballot signature matching process disproportionately disenfranchised voters of color, young voters, first-time voters, and non-English speaking voters. The process itself, plaintiffs contended, is subjective and error-prone, resulting in legitimate votes being thrown out in the name of election integrity. Plaintiffs brought their challenge under the Washington Constitution's Due Process, Equal Protection, and Free and Equal Election Clauses, arguing that signature verification is in itself a "fundamentally flawed" enterprise.
Plaintiffs argued that because voting is a fundamental right under the Washington Constitution, the signature verification law should be subject to strict scrutiny. By contrast, defendants asserted that the law should be subject to rational basis review. The trial court disagreed with both plaintiffs and defendants. Denying the parties' motions for summary judgement, the trial court held that would apply a standard known as Anderson-Burdick to review plaintiff's claims. Taking its name from U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Anderson v. Celebrezze and Burdick v. Takushi, the Anderson-Burdick was originally developed to resolve challenges to candidate and political party ballot access regulations brought under the Equal protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently extended the framework to challenges to voter regulations, such as voter-ID laws, in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. The test as applied by lower courts has developed along two different lines: One approach applies the framework as a flexible, sliding-scale test and the other applies it as a two-track test. The two-track test only subjects an election law to strict scrutiny if the the law imposes a severe burden on the right to vote; otherwise, the court will apply rational basis review. In practice, the two-track version of the test results in most laws being needing only to pass rational basis review even when the burden the law imposes is significant but not severe. Following the trial court's order, plaintiffs appealed to the Washington Supreme Court.
In 2024, the State Democracy Research Initiative submitted an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs urging the court to reject the federal Anderson-Burdick standard. The brief argued that the Washington Constitution requires exacting judicial scrutiny of laws that impair the fundamental right to vote. The brief also explains the state courts around the country have adopted a standard of review that is more rigorous than their federal counterparts. The brief was submitted on behalf of eight legal scholars whose nationally recognized expertise is state constitutional law and the law of democracy: Richard Briffault (Columbia Law School), Jessica Bulman-Pozen (Columbia Law School), Helen Hershkoff (New York University School of Law), Miriam Seifter (University of Wisconsin Law School), Joshua S. Sellers (University of Texas School of Law), Justin Weinstein-Tull (Arizona State University College of Law) Robert F. Williams (Rutgers University School of Law), and Robert Yablon (University of Wisconsin Law School).
On March 6, 2025, the Washington Supreme Court upheld the signature verification law. The court held that the law would survive any level of scrutiny, including strict scrutiny, and therefore decided the case without resolving the standard of review question.