Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans v. Kristin K. Mayes

                  FOR PUBLICATION

   UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
        FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR                     No. 22-16490
RETIRED AMERICANS; VOTO
LATINO; PRIORITIES USA,                     D.C. No.
                                         2:22-cv-01374-
           Plaintiffs-Appellees,              GMS

 v.
                                           OPINION
KRISTIN K. MAYES, in his official
capacity as Attorney General for the
State of Arizona,

           Defendant-Appellant,

YUMA COUNTY REPUBLICAN
COMMITTEE,

           Intervenor-Defendant-
           Appellant,

and

KATIE HOBBS, in her official
capacity as Secretary of State for the
State of Arizona; LARRY NOBLE,
Nominal Defendant, in his official
capacity as Apache County Recorder;
DAVID STEVENS, Nominal
2     ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


Defendant, in his official capacity as
Cochise County Recorder, previously
named as David Stephens; PATTY
HANSEN, Nominal Defendant, in her
official capacity as Coconino County
Recorder; SADIE JO BINGHAM,
Nominal Defendant, in her official
capacity as Gila County Recorder;
WENDY JOHN, Nominal Defendant,
in her official capacity as Graham
County Recorder; SHARIE
MILHEIRO, Nominal Defendant, in
her official capacity as Greenlee
County Recorder; RICHARD
GARCIA, Nominal Defendant, in his
official capacity as La Paz County
Recorder; STEPHEN RICHER,
Nominal Defendant, in his official
capacity as Maricopa County
Recorder; KRISTI BLAIR, Nominal
Defendant, in her official capacity as
Mohave County Recorder; MICHAEL
SAMPLE, Nominal Defendant, in his
official capacity as Navajo County
Recorder; GABRIELLA CAZARES-
KELLY, Nominal Defendant, in her
official capacity as Pima County
Recorder; DANA LEWIS, Nominal
Defendant, in her official capacity as
Pinal County Recorder; SUZANNE
SAINZ, Nominal Defendant, in her
official capacity as Santa Cruz County
Recorder; MICHELLE BURCHILL,
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES    3


Nominal Defendant, in her official
capacity as Yavapai County Recorder;
RICHARD COLWELL, Nominal
Defendant, in his official capacity as
Yuma County Recorder,

           Defendants.

      Appeal from the United States District Court
               for the District of Arizona
     G. Murray Snow, Chief District Judge, Presiding

           Argued and Submitted May 16, 2023
                    Phoenix, Arizona

                Filed September 20, 2024

  Before: Jacqueline H. Nguyen, Daniel P. Collins, and
            Kenneth K. Lee, Circuit Judges.

                  Opinion by Judge Lee;
               Concurrence by Judge Lee;
             Partial Dissent by Judge Nguyen
4      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


                          SUMMARY*


                      Elections / Standing

    The panel vacated the district court’s preliminary
injunction enjoining two Arizona election law amendments
aimed at curtailing the risk of unlawful voting: (1) a
provision that allows the cancellation of a voter’s
registration if a county receives confirmation from another
county that the voter has moved and is registered in that new
county (“Cancellation Provision”); and (2) a provision that
makes it a felony to knowingly provide a mechanism for
voting to another person registered in another state (“Felony
Provision”).
     The panel held that the plaintiffs, three nonprofit groups
who asserted that these two laws would jeopardize
Arizonans’ right to vote if they went into effect, lack Article
III standing to challenge the Cancellation Provision because
they alleged only a frustrated mission and diverted
resources, and failed to show that Arizona’s actions directly
harmed pre-existing core activities. Under FDA v. Alliance
for Hippocratic Medicine, 

 (2024), the plaintiffs
must allege more than that their mission or goal has been
frustrated—they must plead facts showing that their core
activities are directly affected by the defendant’s conduct.
This Court’s organizational standing precedents are
irreconcilable with Hippocratic Medicine and are therefore
overruled.


*
 This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has
been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES         5


    The panel rejected the plaintiffs’ constitutional challenge
to the Felony Provision. The plaintiffs have standing to
challenge the Felony Provision because they have shown
that they face a realistic possibility of prosecution. However,
they are unlikely to succeed on the merits because the phrase
“mechanism for voting” in the Felony Provision is not
unconstitutionally vague. Although the statute does not
define the phrase “mechanism for voting,” the definition of
the word “mechanism,” along with the structure of the
statute, strongly suggests that “mechanism for voting”
includes only unlawful acts of voting, not voter outreach or
registration.
    Concurring, Judge Lee wrote separately to explain why,
even if the plaintiffs had Article III standing to challenge the
Cancellation Provision, they would not prevail on the merits
of their claim that the National Voter Registration Act
preempts the Cancellation Provision. He expressed his
disagreement with two Seventh Circuit decisions, which the
district court relied on in holding that the Cancellation
Provision conflicts with the National Voter Registration Act.
    Dissenting in part, Judge Nguyen dissented from the
majority’s holding that plaintiffs lack organizational
standing to challenge the Cancellation Provision. In her
view, the majority erroneously overruled several cases as
irreconcilable with Hippocratic Medicine, which broke no
new ground on the standing doctrine. She would affirm the
district court’s preliminary injunction as to the Cancellation
Provision because the district court correctly determined, in
line with the Seventh Circuit’s analysis of a similar law, that
the Cancellation Provision likely violates the National Voter
Registration Act. As for the Felony Provision, Judge Nguyen
concurs in the result.
6     ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


                        COUNSEL

Aria C. Branch (argued), Spencer W. Klein, Joel J. Ramirez,
Daniel J. Cohen, and Tina M. Morrison, Elias Law Group
LLP, Washington, D.C.; Jonathan P. Hawley, Elias Law
Group LLP, Seattle, Washington; Roy Herrera and Daniel
A. Arellano, Herrera Arellano LLP, Phoenix, Arizona; for
Plaintiffs-Appellees Arizona Alliance for Retired
Americans.
Tracy A. Olson (argued), Brett W. Johnson, Eric H. Spencer,
and Colin P. Ahler, Snell & Wilmer LLP, Phoenix, Arizona,
for   Intervenor-Defendant-Appellant     Yuma       County
Republican Committee.
Joshua M. Whitaker (argued) and Jennifer J. Wright,
Assistant Attorneys General; Drew C. Ensign, Deputy
Solicitor General; Joseph A. Kanefield, Chief Deputy, Chief
of Staff; Mark Brnovich, Former Attorney General of
Arizona; Kristin K. Mayes, Attorney General of Arizona;
Office of the Arizona Attorney General, Phoenix, Arizona;
for Defendant-Appellant Kristin K. Mayes.


                        OPINION

LEE, Circuit Judge:

    Arizona enacted two election law amendments aimed at
curtailing the risk of unlawful voting: (1) a provision that
allows the cancellation of a voter’s registration if a county
receives “confirmation from another county” that the voter
has moved and is registered in that new county
(“Cancellation Provision”); and (2) a provision that makes it
a felony to knowingly provide a “mechanism for voting” to
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES        7


another person registered in another state (“Felony
Provision”).
    Three nonprofit groups sued, asserting that these two
laws would jeopardize Arizonans’ right to vote if they went
into effect. The district court agreed and preliminarily
enjoined them. We vacate the preliminary injunction and
remand.
    We first hold that the plaintiff organizations lack
standing to challenge the Cancellation Provision. The
plaintiffs rely on our circuit’s confusing line of
organizational standing cases that have broadly construed
Havens Realty v. Coleman, 

 (1982), as allowing
an organization to assert standing if it diverts resources in
response to a governmental policy that frustrates its mission.
But the Supreme Court in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic
Medicine has now put a halt to those line of cases. 

 (2024). The Court held that neither the frustration of a
mission nor the diversion of resources confers standing
under Article III, making our precedents clearly
irreconcilable with Hippocratic Medicine. Organizations
can no longer spend their way to standing based on vague
claims that a policy hampers their mission.
    Now, organizations must fully satisfy the traditional
requirements of Article III standing. Hippocratic Medicine
clarified that the distinctive theory of organizational
standing reflected in Havens Realty extends only to cases in
which an organization can show that a challenged
governmental action directly injures the organization’s pre-
existing core activities and does so apart from the plaintiffs’
response to that governmental action. 602 U.S. at 395–36.
Emphasizing that Havens Realty “was an unusual case” that
the Court “has been careful not to extend . . . beyond its
8     ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


context,” the Supreme Court in Hippocratic Medicine
squarely rejected the sort of “expansive theory” of Havens
Realty standing that has long been a hallmark of our
jurisprudence. Id. Applying the Supreme Court’s now-
clarified understanding of Havens Realty—which has
overruled our prior contrary caselaw—we conclude that the
plaintiffs have failed to plead Article III standing to
challenge the Cancellation Provision.
    We also reject the plaintiffs’ constitutional challenge to
the Felony Provision. We disagree with the district court’s
conclusion that the phrase “mechanism for voting” in the
Felony Provision is so vague that it would likely sweep in
constitutionally protected activity such as voter outreach and
registration. Although the statute does not define the phrase
“mechanism for voting,” the definition of the word
“mechanism,” along with structure of the statute, strongly
suggests that “mechanism for voting” includes only
(unlawful) acts of voting, not voter outreach or registration.
And under the constitutional avoidance doctrine, we read the
Felony Provision narrowly to steer clear of potential
constitutional problems.
                      BACKGROUND
I. Arizona enacts Senate Bill 1260 to combat unlawful
   voting.
    In June 2022, Arizona enacted Senate Bill (SB) 1260 to
tackle (what the state perceived as) the problem of unlawful
voting.     SB 1260 “[m]odifies the criteria for voter
registration cancellations, active early voting list regulations
and violations associated with illegal voting.” Ariz. H.B.
Summary, 2022 Reg. Sess. S.B. 1260. In particular, it adds
three provisions to Arizona’s Elections and Electors Code:
(1) the “Felony Provision,” A.R.S. § 16-1016(12), (2) the
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES         9


“Cancellation Provision,” A.R.S. § 16-165(A)(10), (B), and
(3) the “Removal Provision,” A.R.S. § 16-544(Q)–(R). This
appeal concerns only the Felony Provision and the
Cancellation Provision.
    The Cancellation Provision allows county recorders to
cancel a voter’s registration if the county recorder either
(1) “receives confirmation from another county recorder that
the person registered has registered to vote in that other
county,” A.R.S. § 16-165(A)(10), or (2) receives
“information that a person has registered to vote in a
different county,” at which point she “shall confirm the
person’s voter registration with that other county and, on
confirmation, shall cancel the person’s registration,” A.R.S.
§ 16-165(B).
    The Felony Provision makes it a “class 5 felony” for
anyone to “[k]nowingly provide[] a mechanism for voting to
another person who is registered in another state.” A.R.S.
§ 16-1016(12). The statute, however, does not define
“mechanism for voting.”
II. Arizona laws must conform with the National Voter
    Registration Act.
     Arizona’s election laws must comply with federal voting
laws, including the NVRA. The NVRA, among other things,
imposes certain procedural requirements before a state (or,
by extension, a county) can remove a registered voter from
its voting rolls. See, e.g., 

(a)(3)(A), (d)(1).
For example, the NVRA permits a state to remove a voter
from the voting rolls if she makes that request. 

(a)(3)(A). Relevant here, the NVRA also allows a
state to remove a voter if she has moved to a different
jurisdiction. 

 § 20507(d)(1). And there are two ways to
confirm that the voter has moved. First, the voter can
10     ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


“confirm[] in writing that [she] has changed residence to a
place outside the registrar’s jurisdiction.”            Id.
§ 20507(d)(1)(A). Second, the state may remove a voter
who has not recently voted and does not respond after
receiving notice from the state. Id. § 20507(d)(1)(B).
III. The district court preliminarily enjoins enforcement
     of the Felony Provision and Cancellation Provision.
    After Arizona enacted SB 1260, three political nonprofit
organizations—the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans,
Voto Latino, and Priorities USA—sued the Arizona
Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and fifteen county
recorders, challenging SB 1260 on constitutional grounds.
The Yuma County Republican Committee (YCRC)
intervened to defend the law.
    The plaintiffs sought to preliminarily enjoin the Felony
Provision and the Cancellation Provision.1 The plaintiffs
claimed that the Cancellation Provision violates the NVRA
because it does not comply with the NVRA’s requirements
for canceling a voter’s registration. They also claimed that
the Felony Provision violates the First and Fourteenth
Amendments because it is vague and overbroad. According
to the plaintiffs, by failing to define “mechanism for voting,”
the law might criminalize various voter-outreach activities
protected by the First Amendment, including voter
registration.



1
  The plaintiffs also sought to enjoin SB 1260’s Removal Provision,
arguing that it violates the Due Process Clause by placing an
unjustifiable burden on citizens’ exercise of their fundamental right to
vote. The district court, however, declined to enjoin the Removal
Provision and the plaintiffs do not appeal that decision.
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES        11


    On the first business day after SB 1260 went into effect,
the district court preliminarily enjoined the enforcement of
the Felony and Cancellation Provisions. On appeal, the
Attorney General and YCRC challenge the plaintiffs’
standing and the district court’s preliminary injunction.
                STANDARD OF REVIEW
    “Standing is a legal issue subject to de novo review.”
Arakaki v. Lingle, 

 (9th Cir. 2007). To
establish Article III standing to sue, a plaintiff must show
that she “(1) suffered an injury in fact, (2) that is fairly
traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant, and
(3) that is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial
decision.” Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 

 (2016).
At the preliminary injunction stage, a plaintiff must make a
“clear showing” for each of these three requirements. See
Lopez v. Candaele, 

 (9th Cir. 2010).
    This court “review[s] the grant or denial of a preliminary
injunction for abuse of discretion.” Am. Trucking Ass’ns,
Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, 

 (9th Cir.
2009). To obtain a preliminary injunction, a plaintiff “must
establish that he is likely to succeed on the merits, that he is
likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of
preliminary relief, that the balance of equities tips in his
favor, and that an injunction is in the public interest.” Winter
v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 

 (2008).
    “A district court necessarily abuses its discretion when it
bases its decision on an erroneous legal standard or on
clearly erroneous findings of fact.” Johnson v. Couturier,

, 1078–79 (9th Cir. 2009) (cleaned up). This
court’s review typically “does not extend to the underlying
merits of the case,” meaning that “[a]s long as the district
court got the law right, it will not be reversed simply because
12    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


the appellate court would have arrived at a different result if
it had applied the law to the facts of the case.” 

 (citation
omitted). But where, as here, the district court’s analysis of
the likelihood of success on the merits “rests solely on
conclusions of law and the facts are either established or
undisputed, de novo review is appropriate” for that factor.
Warsoldier v. Woodford, 

 (9th Cir. 2005);
see also Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. v. Grunwald, 

, 1126 n.7 (9th Cir. 2005) (“[W]e review de novo
any underlying issues of law, including the district court’s
interpretation of [Arizona] state law.” (citation omitted)).
                        ANALYSIS
  I. The plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the
     Cancellation Provision.
     An organization asserting that it has standing based on
its own alleged injuries must meet the traditional Article III
standing requirements—meaning, it must show (1) that it has
been injured or will imminently be injured, (2) that the injury
was caused or will be caused by the defendant’s conduct, and
(3) that the injury is redressable. See Hippocratic Medicine,

; Havens Realty, 455 U.S. at 378–79. But
our circuit’s organizational standing case law has been
conflicting and confusing, and some of our cases construing
Havens Realty have lost sight of these requirements. Rather
than require organizations to show actual injury, we have
sometimes allowed organizations to sue when they have
alleged little more than that they have diverted resources in
response to the defendant’s actions to avoid frustrating the
organization’s loosely defined mission.
    These organizational standing precedents are
irreconcilable with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in
Hippocratic Medicine. Under Hippocratic Medicine, the
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES       13


plaintiffs must allege more than that their mission or goal has
been frustrated—they must plead facts showing that their
core activities are directly affected by the defendant’s
conduct. 

. That is, the plaintiffs here
must do more than merely claim that Arizona’s law caused
them to spend money in response to it—they must show that
Arizona’s actions directly harmed already-existing
activities. The plaintiffs have not pleaded facts to establish
these requirements.
    To understand why the plaintiffs lack standing under
Hippocratic Medicine’s proper reading of Article III, we
must walk through how our circuit mistakenly took a detour
in construing Havens Realty.
   A. Article III standing bars parties from using the
      courts merely to vindicate abstract political and
      societal goals.
    Article III of the Constitution only allows federal courts
to decide cases and controversies. So a federal court may
not decide an issue unless the plaintiff has, as Justice Scalia
memorably put it, answered a threshold question: “What’s it
to you?” A. Scalia, The Doctrine of Standing as an Essential
Element of the Separation of Powers, 

, 882 (1983). But not just any answer to that question
will do. Courts may not allow plaintiffs with only
ideological interests in the outcome of a case to pursue that
case in court. Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 

(1992). Nor may courts allow plaintiffs to seek out and
challenge laws that they disagree with based on
disagreement alone. Allen v. Wright, 

(1984).
   These limitations are critical to the separation of powers
and our adversarial system of justice. Courts do not resolve
14    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


disputes in some abstract, generalized sense—we resolve
justiciable disputes between the parties before us. By
confirming that the plaintiff who brings a lawsuit has a
genuine interest in the outcome, we reach better-reasoned
decisions than we would if we issued opinions every time a
plaintiff who “roam[ed] the country in search of
governmental wrongdoing” found what it was looking for.
Valley Forge Christian Coll. v. Ams. United for Separation
of Church & State, Inc., 

 (1982). And this
ensures that the scope of the judicial role remains—as the
Founders intended it to be—limited. Hippocratic Medicine,
602 U.S. at 379–80; see also Federalist No. 47 (James
Madison) (explaining that the judicial branch “can exercise
no executive prerogative” or perform “any legislative
function”).
    To satisfy Article III’s standing requirement, plaintiffs
must make three showings. First, they must show injury.
The injury must be “concrete,” meaning “not abstract.” Id.
at 381. It must be particularized, meaning that it affects the
plaintiff individually, not in a generalized manner. Id. And
it must be either real or imminent, meaning that it has
occurred or will likely occur soon. Id.
    Second, plaintiffs must show that their injury “likely was
caused or likely will be caused by the defendant’s conduct.”
Id. at 382. When a plaintiff challenges a government
regulation that directly applies to or regulates them, this is
easy to do. Id. But when a plaintiff challenges a government
action that does not directly apply to it, or that does not
necessarily affect its behavior, this requirement may be
harder to meet. Id. Plaintiffs may not “rely on speculation
about the unfettered choices made by independent actors not
before the courts,” Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l, 

,
414 n.5 (2013) (quotation omitted), or assume that third
        ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES                   15


parties will act in unpredictable or irrational ways,
California v. Texas, 

 (2021). Nor may
plaintiffs rely on “distant (even if predictable) ripple
effects.” Hippocratic Medicine, 

. Instead,
plaintiffs must show a sufficiently close and predictable link
between the challenged action and their injury-in-fact. 

 2
    Finally, plaintiffs must show that their injury is
redressable. 

. To do so, they must show that a
favorable ruling will cure their injury. California, 

.    When evaluating redressability, courts must
“consider the relationship between ‘the judicial relief
requested’ and the ‘injury’ suffered.” 

 (quoting Allen, 468

2
  The dissent claims that we are conflating third-party standing principles
(Hunt representational standing) with first-party standing (Havens
Realty organizational standing). Dissent at 48–49. Not so. The
causation requirement under traditional Article III standing must always
be satisfied, either as to the organization itself (in a first-party standing
case) or as to one or more members of the organization (in a third-party
standing case). And it is incorrect to say that Hippocratic Medicine’s
emphasis on causation was referring to third-party standing only. The
Court held that when a “plaintiff challenges the government’s ‘unlawful
regulation (or lack of regulation) of someone else,’” then standing may
be “substantially more difficult to establish” because causation
“ordinarily hinge[s] on the response of the regulated (or regulable) third
party to the government action or inaction—and perhaps the response of
others as well.” 

 (citing Lujan, 

). That is
exactly the situation here: the plaintiff organizations are asserting their
own injuries—i.e., diversion of resources and frustration of mission—
based on the government’s regulation of third parties (their clients whom
they register to vote). This is still first-party standing—and Hippocratic
Medicine’s emphasis on causation applies here. Finally, the dissent
points out that the first-party standing analysis is the same for
organizations as it is for individuals. Dissent at 49. That is true. The
problem has been that we have not rigorously applied the traditional
Article III standing analysis to organizations as we typically have for
individuals.
16    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


U.S. at 753 n.19). If there is no injury or if the requested
remedy would not cure the plaintiff’s injury, then the injury
is not redressable. 

.
     B. Havens Realty—and          the    Ninth     Circuit’s
        expansion of it.
    In Havens Realty, the defendant company managed two
apartment complexes, one of which was occupied
predominantly by whites, and the other of which was
integrated. 

 & n.1. In leasing its apartments,
the defendant allegedly engaged in “racial steering” by
steering non-whites only to the integrated complex and away
from the largely white complex. 

 at 366–68 & nn. 1 & 4.
These steering activities included falsely informing Black
prospective renters, including a HOME employee, that there
were no apartments available in the largely white complex.

. The Supreme Court held that HOME had
standing to challenge the landlord’s racial steering practices
because the practices “frustrated” HOME’s “efforts to assist
equal access to housing through counseling and other
referral services” and required HOME to “devote significant
resources to identify and counteract” the practices. 

.
    From Havens Realty, we have derived a two-part test that
conferred standing on organizations if they merely alleged
that a challenged policy (1) frustrated the organization’s
mission or goal, and (2) required the organization to spend
money or divert resources in response. See, e.g., Fellowship
of the Christian Athletes v. San Jose Unified School Dist., 

 (9th Cir. 2023) (en banc); Fair Hous. Council
of San Fernando Valley v. Roommate.com, LLC, 

 (9th Cir. 2012).
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES       17


    We have often said that Havens Realty does not allow
organizations to vindicate abstract interests or spend their
way into Article III standing, but our cases have been less
clear, and often conflicting, on what then a plaintiff must do
to show injury. See Nielsen v. Thornell, 

,
1181–82 (9th Cir. 2024) (Collins, J., dissenting) (arguing for
a narrow reading of our confusing precedents, many of
which “applied Havens Realty in summary fashion” and with
“no detailed analysis”). So in practice, we often paid lip
service to a more stringent standing requirement, but many
of our cases seemed effectively to allow plaintiffs to assert
standing merely by expending resources in furtherance of
“strong moral, ideological, or policy objection[s] to a
government action.” Hippocratic Medicine, 

.
    But as the Supreme Court has now clarified, Havens
Realty never discussed frustrating an abstract organizational
mission—it discussed the direct impact of racial steering on
HOME’s “core business activities.” See Hippocratic
Medicine, 

. In loosely characterizing Havens
Realty as a case about missions and goals, our cases lost sight
of that crucial limitation. Organizations can—and do—
define their missions “with hydra-like or extremely broad
aspirational goals.” See Nielsen, 

. Looking
at indirect impacts on those missions and goals—instead of
direct interference with the organization’s core activities—
could allow an organization to challenge virtually anything,
including policies that only affect the organization’s
intangible social interests. For example, an organization can
define its mission as, say, ensuring equal protection or
safeguarding property rights—and easily assert that a
governmental policy in the abstract frustrates that mission,
even if the challenged policy has no direct impact on the
organization’s carrying out of its existing core activities. In
18    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


doing so, our cases have effectively allowed organizations to
assert standing based on the sort of “general legal, moral,
ideological, and policy concerns” that the Supreme Court
has confirmed “do not suffice on their own to confer Article
III standing to sue in federal court.” Hippocratic Medicine,

.
     We equally erred to the extent that our cases have
suggested that the mere diversion of resources in response to
a policy can provide standing. In Havens Realty, HOME
spent resources offsetting policies that harmed its then-
existing activities—specifically, its ongoing activities in
counseling its constituents on available housing. 

; see also Hippocratic Medicine, 

. Some
of our cases appear to have loosened this requirement,
finding standing wherever an organization alleged that it
spent (or would spend) resources on new activities in
response to a challenged policy—even if those new activities
consist only of educational and advocacy efforts in
ideological opposition to the challenged policy. And, most
troublingly, we have sometimes accepted that such new
activities confer standing even if they are no more than a new
opportunity for the organization to advance its loosely
defined “mission.” Roommate.com, 

 (Ikuta,
J., concurring in part) (noting that an organization’s mission
has not been frustrated if it spends money to further that
goal). Thus, we have at times gone so far as to endorse a
self-help theory of standing under which an organization’s
mission is supposedly hampered if, in response to a
defendant’s conduct, the organization decides to further its
mission in a different way, by shifting resources from one
“activity that advances [its] goals” to new activities that also
further its goals by opposing the new policy. See Nat’l
Council of La Raza v. Cegavske, 

, 1040–41
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES        19


(9th Cir. 2015) (concluding that voter advocacy organization
suffered injury by engaging in additional voter advocacy).
In other words, our case law has suggested that an
organization suffers cognizable harm because it voluntarily
spends money to further its goals.
    Many judges on this circuit have highlighted how this
circuit’s expansion of Havens Realty went astray. See, e.g.,
Roommate.com, 

 (Ikuta, J., concurring in
part) (“This case brings the strain between our case law and
Supreme Court precedent close to a rupture.”); Rodriguez v.
City of San Jose, 

, 1135 n. 10 (9th Cir. 2019)
(Friedland, J.) (“We share many of these concerns” about the
circuit’s organizational standing precedents “but are bound
to apply” them); East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Biden, 

 (9th Cir. 2021) (Bumatay, J., dissenting from
the denial of rehearing en banc) (“We have moved well
beyond requiring particularized and concrete injury and have
embraced a ‘general grievance’ theory of jurisdiction by
construing organizational standing so broadly.”); Sabra v.
Maricopa Cnty. Comm. Coll., 

 (9th Cir.
2022) (VanDyke, J., concurring) (“[A]s in other areas of our
court’s jurisprudence, we have paid lip service to [Article
III’s] rules while faltering in our application.”); Nielsen, 

 (Collins, J., dissenting) (If “mere advocacy” is
enough, then “any person who is opposed to any government
policy would have standing to challenge that policy.”). After
the Supreme Court’s decision in Hippocratic Medicine, we
can no longer follow our overbroad reading of Havens
Realty.
    The dissent maintains that Hippocratic Medicine did not
alter our (mis)reading of Havens Realty. Dissent at 47–48.
But it did. The telltale sign is that the Supreme Court in
Hippocratic Medicine noted that it “has been careful not to
20    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


extend the Havens holding beyond its context.” 

. But our court has been anything but careful in its
broad reading of Havens Realty, and we must comply with
the Supreme Court’s admonition that Havens Realty is an
“unusual case” that should not be expanded beyond its
unique context. 

 We thus now apply the traditional
Article III inquiry for organizational standing (as clarified by
Hippocratic Medicine) and cannot rely on our two-part test
of simply looking at diversion of resources and frustration of
mission.
    The dissent tries to put a favorable gloss on our Havens
Realty case law, arguing that “[n]o Ninth Circuit precedent
describes Havens Realty as a two-part test.” Dissent at 47.
But we have done just that. For example, in Sabra, we held
that “we have ‘read Havens to hold that an organization has
direct standing to sue where it establishes that the
defendant’s behavior has frustrated its mission and caused it
to divert resources in response to that frustration of
purpose.’” 

 (quoting E. Bay Sanctuary
Covenant v. Biden, 

 (9th Cir. 2020) (in turn
quoting Fair Hous. of Marin v. Combs, 

(9th Cir. 2002))). Indeed, we did not even bother mentioning
the traditional three-part Article III standing inquiry (injury-
in-fact, causation/traceability, redressability) in Sabra
because we were relying solely on the two-part frustration of
mission and diversion of resources framework that our
circuit adopted for organizational standing. And even when
we give lip service to Article III standing requirements, we
often ultimately applied the more forgiving two-part test that
we mistakenly derived from Havens Realty. See, e.g., E. Bay
Sanctuary, 

 (Bumatay, J., dissenting from
the denial of rehearing en banc) (noting that the panel
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES       21


opinion’s “broad and malleable standard” of standing is “an
end-run around Article III”). We no longer can do so.
   C. Our organizational standing precedent is clearly
      irreconcilable with Hippocratic Medicine.
    Supreme Court authorities—rather than Ninth Circuit
precedent—are binding on three-judge panels “where
intervening Supreme Court authority is clearly
irreconcilable with our prior circuit authority.” Miller v.
Gammie, 

 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc). In
Hippocratic Medicine, the Supreme Court applied
traditional standing principles to an organizational plaintiff,
and in doing so, rejected both prongs of our organizational
standing test. 602 U.S. at 395–96. In particular, the
Supreme Court clarified that organizational standing may
not be premised on a broadly stated mission or goal. Id. at
394. Nor may it hinge on the claim that the organization has
diverted resources in response to government action that
does not directly affect that organization’s existing core
activities. Id.
    To start, Hippocratic Medicine clarified that a policy
does not cause an injury in fact unless the policy “directly
affect[s] and interfere[s]” with the organization’s “core
business activities”—much like a manufacturer’s sale of a
defective good harms the consumer who buys it. Id. at 395.
So just as a consumer must suffer an actual and concrete
harm, the organization must suffer an actual and concrete
harm. Id. And that harm must directly and actually affect
the organization’s “core” activities, not merely its “abstract
social interests.” Id. (quoting Havens Realty, 

). No matter how much a defendant’s conduct can be
said to frustrate an organization’s abstract mission, alleged
injuries to an organization’s “general legal, moral,
22    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


ideological, and policy concerns do not suffice on their own
to confer Article III standing to sue in federal court.”
Hippocratic Medicine, 

; see also 

(holding that the plaintiffs organizations’ argument that the
FDA’s challenged policy “has ‘impaired’ their ‘ability to
provide services and achieve their organizational missions’”
“does not work to demonstrate standing”).
    In Havens Realty, it was “[c]ritical[]” that HOME was
“not only [an] issue-advocacy organization, but also
operated a housing counseling service.” 

. In other
words, HOME had standing because receiving false
information about available housing directly harmed
HOME’s core activity—counseling its clients on housing
availability. 

 HOME would not have had standing,
however, if the racial steering practice only affected its
“public advocacy” and “public education” functions—the
injury depended on HOME’s counseling services. 

;
cf. Sabra, 

 (permitting standing based on
mere harm to abstract advocacy interests and on a
government action’s effects in shifting public opinion on
matters of public interest).
    Next, Hippocratic Medicine clarified that it is tougher
for a plaintiff to establish causation than some of our
precedents suggested. 602 U.S. at 382–83. This is obvious:
If the party before the court seeks to challenge a law that
does not directly affect it, the chain of causation will be
longer and inferences will be necessary. 

 So we must
scrutinize the harm an organization asserts to ensure that the
organization has not tried to “spend its way into standing
simply by expending money to gather information and
advocate against the defendant’s actions.” Id. at 394. If we
do not, we risk permitting “all the organizations in America”
to challenge everything they dislike, “provided they spend
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES         23


even a single dollar opposing those policies.” Id. at 395. To
avoid that, we must not allow the diversion of resources in
response to a policy to confer standing—instead, the
organization must show that the new policy directly harms
its already-existing core activities. Id.
    Even the narrowest reading of our organizational
standing precedents allowed plaintiffs to satisfy Article III
using the sort of frustration-of-mission and diversion-of-
resource theories the Supreme Court rejected in Hippocratic
Medicine. See Nielsen, 101 F.4th at 1180–81 (Collins, J.,
dissenting); see also Sabra, 

; Roommate.com,

; Nat’l Council of La Raza, 800 F.3d at
1040–41. These precedents are thus irreconcilable with
Hippocratic Medicine—and thus overruled. In sum, rather
than applying our two-pronged inquiry of whether a
challenged policy frustrates an organization’s mission and
requires it to spend money resources, we now must apply,
following the strictures of Hippocratic Medicine, the
traditional three-part Article III standing analysis: (1) injury-
in-fact, (2) causation, and (3) redressability.
    D. The plaintiffs here lack standing to challenge the
       Cancellation Provision because they have alleged
       only a frustrated mission and diverted resources.
    The plaintiffs have not shown they have standing to
challenge the Cancellation Provision.          The plaintiffs
speculate that they might in the future need to divert
resources because the Cancellation Provision could cause
voters’ current registrations—rather than old, outdated
registrations—to be cancelled. And the plaintiffs allege that
this interferes with their mission to encourage minority voter
registration. This conjecture-laden theory is insufficient
under Article III.
24    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


    First, the plaintiffs cannot show injury-in-fact because
the Cancellation Provision does not directly affect their pre-
existing core activities. With or without the Cancellation
Provision, the plaintiffs can still register and educate
voters—in other words, continue their core activities that
they have always engaged in. See Hippocratic Medicine,

. Rather, the plaintiffs are complaining that
they must now take it upon themselves to develop training
materials or ask constituents additional questions in response
to the Cancellation Provision. The plaintiffs thus attempt to
spend their way into Article III standing by taking new
actions in response to what they view as a disfavored policy.
But as Hippocratic Medicine explains, spending money
voluntarily in response to a governmental policy cannot be
an injury in fact. See 

.
    Second, the plaintiffs’ speculative harm is too attenuated
to satisfy Article III’s causation requirement. According to
the plaintiffs, if they fail to confirm whether voters have
existing registrations, the Cancellation Provision may cause
a county recorder to cancel the voter’s new registration
instead of the old one. It is unclear whether the plaintiffs
view this as a direct organizational harm based on the
resources they will divert to avoid cancelled voter
registrations, or if they instead intend to assert claims on
behalf of the members whose registrations may be cancelled.
See Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising
Commission, 

 (1977) (discussing
organization’s associational standing based on representing
its members). But regardless of whether they are alleging a
Havens Realty direct organizational standing or a Hunt
associational standing based on their members’ alleged
injuries, their theory rests on either an implausible reading
of the Cancellation Provision or pure speculation—neither
        ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES                     25


of which creates enough of a causal chain to satisfy Article
III.
      Take the plaintiffs’ misreading of the Cancellation
Provision. The plaintiffs insist that the Cancellation
Provision could be read to allow county recorders to cancel
a new voter registration when that registration is submitted.
Arizona law, as well as basic common sense, makes clear
that the Cancellation Provision does no such thing. The
statute says that the “county recorder shall cancel a
registration . . . [w]hen the county recorder receives
confirmation from another county recorder that the person
registered has registered to vote in that other county.” See
A.R.S. § 16-165(A)(11). As the statutory text explains, the
county recorder will cancel the old registration in its county
if it confirms that the voter “has registered” in a new county.3
As the Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has
explained, the state maintains a statewide voter registration
system, Arizona Voter Information Database (AVID), that
all the counties rely on for maintaining and verifying voter
registration. That AVID database reveals which registration
is more recent for a particular voter. And in case there was
any doubt remaining about what the law requires, the
Arizona Attorney General confirmed in its supplemental



3
   Other statutory provisions in Arizona law echo this same
point. See A.R.S. § 16-164(A) (“On receipt of a new registration form
that effects a change of . . . address . . . the county recorder shall indicate
electronically in the county voter registration that the registration has
been canceled . . . .”) (emphasis added); A.R.S. § 16-166(B) (“If the
elector provides the county recorder with a new registration form or
otherwise revises the elector’s information, the county recorder shall
change the register to reflect the changes indicated on the new
registration.”) (emphasis added).
26     ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


brief that only the old registration would be cancelled under
the statute.4
    At its core, the plaintiffs’ argument is that the county
recorder—whose main job is to maintain accurate voting
registration—will negligently remove the new voting
registration and decide to keep the old one. But as the
Arizona Secretary of State and the Arizona Attorney General
have explained, that is not what the law requires or what any
county recorder would reasonably be expected to do. The
plaintiffs’ causal chain of harm is as fanciful as a complaint
alleging that the U.S. Department of State will process a
passport renewal by destroying the new passport and sending
the expired one back. This theory of causation is “simply
too speculative” to satisfy Article III. Hippocratic Medicine,

. And for similar reasons, the plaintiffs are
also wrong in contending that they have associational
standing based, not on their own injuries, but on the alleged
harms that the Cancellation Provision will inflict on their
members. See Hunt, 

. These associational-
standing arguments rest on the same unduly speculative
theory of causation—namely, that county recorders will




4
  The dissent states that the Arizona Attorney General “agree[s] with
plaintiffs’ statutory interpretation.” Dissent at 53. But the Attorney
General was only referring to what constitutes “credible information”
under the statute, not whether the statute requires a new voting
registration to be cancelled in favor of the old one. Further, the dissent’s
suggestion that third parties may try to maliciously purge voting
registrations (Dissent at 52, n.2) is off-base. Under the statute, a county
recorder has to confirm voting registration records with the other county
recorder before removing the old registration.
        ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES                   27


supposedly cancel new voter registrations rather than old
ones.5
    The plaintiffs attempt to cure these problems by claiming
that they have alleged more than “mere issue advocacy”—
and thus satisfied Hippocratic Medicine—because the
Cancellation Provision creates a direct organizational harm
by “impact[ing] their ability to engage in their core voter
registration activities.” But this is a diversion-of-resources

5
  The dissent argues that we are addressing the merits of the claim in our
standing analysis. Dissent at 51. We are not. The plaintiffs’ claim is
based on the premise that the National Voter Registration Act preempts
Arizona law. We do not address the merits of that preemption argument.
Rather, we merely point out that the plaintiffs’ chimerical and
speculative theory of harm—that the law will compel the state to
bizarrely cancel a new voting registration form and keep the old one—is
belied by the statutory language, common sense, and statements from
bipartisan state elected officials in charge of administering and enforcing
Arizona’s election laws. We are not bound to accept an incorrect
premise in determining whether a party has standing. Indeed, in
determining whether a chain-of-causation is too speculative under our
Article III standing principles, we must look at whether a plaintiff is
relying on a far-fetched speculation in assessing how a statute may be
applied.
     The dissent relies on our decision in Peace Ranch, LLC v. Bonta, 

 (9th Cir. 2024), to argue that we are impermissibly
determining the merits of the case in our standing analysis. But that case
is plainly distinguishable. There, the state argued in its brief that its law
regulating mobile home parks did not apply to the plaintiff’s park and
thus the plaintiff did not have standing. But at oral argument the state
refused to say that it would not enforce that law against the plaintiff. The
state’s refusal to disclaim enforcement was especially notable because
the record showed that the state legislature had specifically targeted that
park (and that park only) in passing the law. 

. Given that
record, we refused to credit the state’s argument in its brief that the law
did not apply to the plaintiff. Here, in contrast, the law is clear that the
state will not cancel the new registration.
28    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


theory by another name. The only way in which the
Cancellation Provision arguably affects the plaintiffs’ “core
voter registration activities” is by causing the plaintiffs, in
response to the provision, to decide to shift some resources
from one set of pre-existing activities in support of their
overall mission to another, new set of such activities.
Indeed, the plaintiffs’ purported harm—e.g., they will have
to “expend . . . resources,” “create[e] a training program,”
“divert additional time and resources” (Dissent at 58–59)—
represent the same diversion-of-resources and frustration-of-
mission injury that Hippocratic Medicine rejected.
    Unlike Havens Realty, as clarified by Hippocratic
Medicine, here there is no sense in which the Cancellation
Provision can be said to directly injure the organizations’
pre-existing core activities, apart from the plaintiffs’
response to that provision. The dissent suggests that the
plaintiff HOME in Havens Realty would not have standing
under our reading of Hippocratic Medicine. We disagree.
Havens Realty had “perceptibly impaired” HOME’s “core”
and ongoing ability to provide counseling and referral
services because it lied and “provided HOME’s black
employees false information about apartment availability.”
Hippocratic Medicine, 

. Put another way,
Havens Realty had “directly affected and interfered” with
HOME’s pre-existing goal of helping its Black clients obtain
housing because Havens Realty had wrongfully lied that
nothing was available in predominantly white apartments.

 As the Supreme Court explained, a plaintiff group has
organizational standing if it can show harm to its “core
business activities” much like a “retailer who sues a
manufacturer for selling defective goods to the retailer.” 

So Havens Realty was not a case in which HOME claimed
standing based on its voluntary decision to spend more
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES       29


resources to educate its clients in response to Havens
Realty’s actions; rather, its core and ongoing business
activity was “perceptibly impaired” by Havens Realty’s
wrongful lies. 

    The plaintiffs here, in contrast, can continue its core and
ongoing business of registering voters. The Cancellation
Provision does not “directly affect[] and interfere[]” with
that pre-existing activity. The only harm here is the potential
diversion of resource to remind people of the far-fetched
possibility that the registrar of voters may somehow
mistakenly or maliciously cancel their new voting
registration form if they had earlier registered elsewhere. In
other words, the plaintiffs are claiming that they are harmed
because they will spend resources on education in response
to the new law. This alleged harm simply is not akin to a
“retailer who sues a manufacturer for selling defective goods
to the retailer” or a group’s core business activity being
“perceptibly impaired.” 

 If we accepted the plaintiffs’
extravagant theory of standing, a law school professor who
teaches election law would have standing to challenge the
Cancellation Provision because she would have to expend
resources to change her curriculum and further educate her
students about the state of the law. Article III standing
cannot be based on such fanciful or speculative harm.
  II. The plaintiffs have standing to challenge the Felony
      Provision but their argument likely fails on the
      merits.
    To establish standing at the preliminary injunction stage,
plaintiffs must make a clear showing that they have suffered
an actual or imminent injury that a preliminary injunction
would remedy. See Lujan, 

; Spokeo, 

 (“a plaintiff must show that he or she suffered” an
30     ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


“actual or imminent” injury (citation omitted)); Lopez, 

. Only if plaintiffs make that clear showing can
we decide the merits of the claim.
     A. The plaintiffs have standing because they have
        shown that they face a realistic possibility of
        prosecution.
   To make a clear showing of standing, the plaintiffs must
show that they face a reasonable risk of prosecution under
the Felony Provision such that they are chilled from
engaging in their constitutionally protected voter outreach
and registration activities.6
    This court has repeatedly held that when a “threatened
enforcement effort implicates First Amendment rights, the
inquiry tilts dramatically toward a finding of standing” to
guard against chilling protected speech. LSO, Ltd. v. Stroh,

 (9th Cir. 2000). Of course, even under
this “lowered threshold,” the threat of injury to plaintiffs still
must be “credible, not imaginary or speculative.” Lopez, 

 (cleaned up). Put another way, plaintiffs
satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement in a pre-enforcement
challenge if they allege “an intention to engage in a course
of conduct arguably affected with a constitutional interest,
but proscribed by a statute, and there exists a credible threat



6
  Unlike the Cancellation Provision, Hippocratic Medicine does not
undermine the plaintiffs’ standing to challenge the Felony Provision
because the plaintiff organizations allege that they will themselves be
prosecuted for violating the Felony Provision, i.e., that they are parties
as to whom the Felony Provision “forbid[s] some action.” Hippocratic
Medicine, 

. Thus, in asserting standing to challenge the
Felony Provision, the plaintiffs do not rely on the frustration of their
mission or diversion of resources.
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES       31


of prosecution.” Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 

, 159 (2014).
    Thus, a plaintiff bringing a pre-enforcement First
Amendment challenge typically must show that her
expressive activity is chilled because she faces a “realistic
danger” of prosecution under the statute she challenges.
Libertarian Party of L.A. Cnty. v. Bowen, 

(9th Cir. 2013) (citation omitted). “In evaluating the
genuineness of a claimed threat of prosecution, courts
examine three factors:          (1) whether plaintiffs have
articulated a ‘concrete plan’ to violate the law in question,
(2) whether the prosecuting authorities have communicated
a specific warning or threat to initiate proceedings, and
(3) the history of past prosecution or enforcement under the
challenged statute.” 

 (citation omitted). In assessing these
three factors, we believe that the plaintiffs face a “realistic
danger” of prosecution.
    First, the plaintiffs have concrete plans to engage in
constitutionally protected voter outreach activities,
including voter registration, that they believe may violate the
Felony Provision. We have generally held that a plaintiff
satisfies this first factor if the “plaintiff’s intended speech
arguably falls within the statute’s reach.” Cal. Pro-Life
Council, Inc. v. Getman, 

, 1095 (9th Cir. 2003)
(emphasis added). The plaintiffs clear that low hurdle
because the undefined phrase “mechanism for voting”
arguably could be read to encompass First Amendment
activity such as voter registration.
   Second, while no Arizona official has threatened to
prosecute the plaintiffs, that does not defeat their standing.
In First Amendment challenges, “the plaintiff need only
demonstrate that a threat of potential enforcement will cause
32    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


him to self-censor, and not follow through with his concrete
plan to engage in protected conduct.” Protectmarriage.com-
Yes on 8 v. Bowen, 

 (9th Cir. 2014); see
also Tingley v. Ferguson, 

, 1068 (9th Cir. 2022)
(suggesting that a plaintiff need not show a specific threat of
prosecution to establish standing if the general specter of
liability will cause her to self-censor).
    In this litigation, the state’s Attorney General has
rejected any interpretation of SB 1260 that would
criminalize ordinary voter outreach. But this court has held
that officials cannot inoculate laws from review if the
disavowal is a “mere litigation position.” Lopez, 

. Outside of this case, the state has offered no official
guidance limiting the Felony Provision’s reach, even though
the state has been on notice that the provision is vague and
potentially chilling speech. The Attorney General’s office
also acknowledges that its interpretation will not bind its
successor. Thus, the plaintiffs have established that they will
self-censor because of SB 1260’s nascent threat, satisfying
the second factor too.
    Finally, the plaintiffs’ inability to show a history of
prosecution under the Felony Provision does not undermine
their standing. See LSO, Ltd., 

; see also
Libertarian Party, 

. In pre-enforcement
cases, “an actual arrest, prosecution, or other enforcement
action is not a prerequisite to challenging the law.”
Driehaus, 573 U.S. at 158. SB 1260 was enjoined the day
after it took effect, so Arizona never had a genuine
opportunity to enforce it. See id.
    Considering these three factors together, we hold that the
plaintiffs have met their burden to make a clear showing of
a concrete injury and thus they have Article III standing.
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES       33


   B. The plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail on the merits
      because the phrase “mechanism for voting” is not
      unconstitutionally vague.
    In a vagueness challenge, our first task is to determine
whether the challenged law curtails First Amendment
freedoms. Village of Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman
Estates, Inc., 

 (1982). Laws that restrict
First Amendment rights are less likely to survive a vagueness
challenge. Compare Humanitarian L. Project v. U.S.
Treasury Dep’t, 

 (9th Cir. 2009) with
Hotel & Motel Ass’n of Oakland v. City of Oakland, 

 (9th Cir. 2003). That is because First Amendment
rights are “delicate and vulnerable, as well as supremely
precious in our society . . . [and] the threat of sanctions may
deter their exercise almost as potently as the actual
application of sanctions.” NAACP v. Button, 

 (1963).
     A law is void for vagueness when it “fail[s] to provide
the kind of notice that will enable ordinary people to
understand what conduct it prohibits” or when it
“authorize[s] and even encourage[s] arbitrary and
discriminatory enforcement.” City of Chicago v. Morales,

 (1999). This court applies this test more
strictly when the challenged law touches on forms of
political speech. Butcher v. Knudsen, 

(9th Cir. 2022). At the same time, we know that “[f]acial
invalidation is, manifestly, strong medicine that has been
employed by the Court sparingly and only as a last resort.”
Cal. Tchrs. Ass’n v. State Bd. of Educ., 

, 1155
(9th Cir. 2001) (citation omitted).
    When evaluating the vagueness of a statute, we
“interpret statutory language in view of the entire text,
34    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


considering the context.” Nicaise v. Sundaram, 

 (Ariz. 2019). We give words “their ordinary
meaning unless it appears from the context or otherwise that
a different meaning is intended.” Arizona ex rel. Brnovich v.
Maricopa Cnty. Cmty. Coll. Dist. Bd., 

(Ariz. 2018) (citation omitted).
    The Felony Provision prohibits “[k]nowingly
provid[ing] a mechanism for voting to another person who
is registered in another state, including by forwarding an
early ballot addressed to the other person.” A.R.S. § 16-
1016(12). Because the statute does not define “mechanism
for voting,” we must begin by “apply[ing] the ordinary
meaning of the term.” Arizona v. Dann, 

(Ariz. 2009). As relevant here, a “mechanism” is “a process
or technique for achieving a particular result,” Mechanism,
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1981 ed.), or
an “instrument or process . . . by which something is done,”
Mechanism, American Heritage Dictionary (5th ed. 2018).
The object of “mechanism” in the statute’s prepositional
phrase is “voting,” which refers to the “act or process of
casting a vote,” Voting, Webster’s Third New International
Dictionary (1981 ed.). So construed under its ordinary
meaning, the phrase “mechanism for voting” likely refers to
a process, technique, or instrument for casting a vote. That
plain-meaning construction of the phrase does not include
activities such as voter registration because providing a
mechanism for registering to vote is different from providing
a “mechanism for voting.”
    We also do not read words or phrases divorced from the
statutory scheme. “[I]t is a ‘fundamental principle of
statutory construction (and, indeed, of language itself) that
the meaning of a word cannot be determined in isolation, but
must be drawn from the context in which it is used.’” Adams
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES         35


v. Comm’n on App. Ct. Appointments, 

, 374
(Ariz. 2011) (quoting Deal v. United States, 

 (1993)). When we look at the entire statute, including
the surrounding provisions, that reinforces our conclusion
that “mechanism for voting” does not include voting
outreach or registration. See Nicaise, 

.
    To begin, the title of the statutory section where the
Felony Provision is housed suggests that it only criminalizes
misconduct involving the actual act of casting a vote. See
Miller v. City of Tucson, 

 (Ariz. Ct. App.
1987) (“This court has also ruled that it is proper to consider
the title of a statute in attempting to interpret the enacting
body’s intent.” (citing State v. Shepler, 

(Ariz. Ct. App.1984))). The title lists “Illegal voting,”
“pollution of ballot box,” and “removal or destruction of
ballot box, poll lists or ballots.” A.R.S. § 16-1016. All these
activities in the title involve the act of voting, confirming
that “mechanism for voting” is confined to that as well.
    And all the other specific criminal violations listed in this
section are indeed related to acts of voting. See id. That
underscores that this section regulates the act of voting itself,
not voter registration. See id. The section criminalizes
twelve specified acts related to voting:

        1. Not being entitled to vote, knowingly
        votes.
        2. Knowingly votes more than once at any
        election.
        3. Knowingly votes in two or more
        jurisdictions in this state for which residency
        is required for lawful voting and the person is
        not a resident of all jurisdictions in which the
36   ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


      person voted. For the purposes of this
      paragraph, a person has only one residence
      for the purpose of voting.
      4. Knowingly votes in this state in an election
      in which a federal office appears on the ballot
      and votes in another state in an election in
      which a federal office appears on the ballot
      and the election day for both states is the
      same date.
      5. Knowingly gives to an election official two
      or more ballots folded together.
      6. Knowingly changes or destroys a ballot
      after it has been deposited in the ballot box.
      7. Knowingly adds a ballot to those legally
      cast at any election, by fraudulently
      introducing the ballot into the ballot box
      either before or after the ballots in the ballot
      box have been counted.
      8. Knowingly adds to or mixes with ballots
      lawfully cast, other ballots, while they are
      being canvassed or counted, with intent to
      affect the result of the election, or to exhibit
      the ballots as evidence on the trial of an
      election contest.
      9. Knowingly and unlawfully carries away,
      conceals or removes a poll list, ballot or
      ballot box from the polling place, or from
      possession of the person authorized by law to
      have custody thereof.
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES        37


       10. Knowingly destroys a polling list, ballot
       or ballot box with the intent to interrupt or
       invalidate the election.
       11. Knowingly detains, alters, mutilates or
       destroys ballots or election returns.
       12. Knowingly provides a mechanism for
       voting to another person who is registered in
       another state, including by forwarding an
       early ballot addressed to the other person.

Id. The first eleven provisions all directly relate to
misconduct in the act of voting; none of them relates to pre-
voting activity, such as voting registration or outreach. The
provision about “mechanism for voting” appears as the last
and twelfth item on that list of misconduct. As a general
matter, “words grouped in a list should be given related
meanings.” See Scalia and Garner, Reading Law at 195.
Consistent with the other eleven neighboring provisions, the
twelfth provision about “mechanism for voting” likely
encompasses only misconduct related to the act of voting.
    Another statutory clue that “mechanism for voting” does
not include voting outreach and registration is that a different
section penalizes voter registration-related misconduct. See
A.R.S. § 16-181–84. Section 16-182(A) provides criminal
penalties for any individual who “allows himself to be
registered . . . knowing that he is not entitled to such
registration, or a person who knowingly causes or procures
another person to be registered . . . knowing that such other
person is not entitled to such registration.” This express
provision for voting registration fraud implies that the
“mechanism for voting” provision in the section devoted to
illegal voting refers only to voting, not voting registration.
38    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


Otherwise, the separate registration section would be
superfluous. And a “cardinal principle of statutory
interpretation is to give meaning, if possible, to every word
and provision so that no word or provision is rendered
superfluous.” Nicaise, 

.
     In sum, when we review “mechanism for voting” within
the broader context of the statutory framework, its meaning
is clear such that it “defin[es] a ‘core’ of proscribed conduct
that allows people to understand whether their actions will
result in adverse consequences.” Forbes v. Napolitano, 

 (9th Cir. 2001) (citation omitted). A
“mechanism for voting” thus concerns the process involved
in casting a vote, not registering to vote. See, e.g.,
Stambaugh v. Killian, 

 (Ariz. 2017)
(“Words in statutes should be read in context in determining
their meaning.”); Scalia and Garner, Reading Law at 167–68
(“Context is a primary determinant of meaning.”).
    Finally, we have another reason for rejecting the
plaintiffs’ expansive reading of the Felony Provision. We try
to avoid constitutional problems if there is a reasonable way
to read a statute to avoid them. Cal. Tchrs. Ass’n, 271 F.3d
at 1147 (explaining that “before invalidating a state statute
on its face, a federal court must determine whether the
statute is ‘readily susceptible’ to a narrowing construction”
(quoting Virginia v. Am. Booksellers Ass’n, Inc., 

 (1988))); see Arizona v. Gomez, 

(Ariz. 2006) (“We also construe statutes, when possible, to
avoid constitutional difficulties.”). And in the realm of
criminal law, the rule of lenity tilts the scale in favor of the
criminal defendant and we construe ambiguous criminal
statutes narrowly. See Arizona v. Brown, 

(Ariz. Ct. App. 2008) (“[W]e construe criminal statutes that
are unclear or reasonably susceptible to different
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES       39


interpretations in favor of lenity.”). Here, as explained
earlier, the Felony Provision is readily susceptible to a
narrowing construction and we will not construe its use of
“mechanism for voting” broadly to include voter
registration.
    In sum, the district court abused its discretion in
concluding that the plaintiffs would likely prevail in their
challenge of the Felony Provision and granting their motion
for preliminary injunction. Because we hold that the Felony
Provision is not unconstitutionally vague, the plaintiffs have
not met their burden of showing a likelihood of success on
the merits.
                      CONCLUSION
    We hold that the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the
Cancellation Provision, and that the district court erred in
concluding that the plaintiffs showed a likelihood of success
in their challenge of the Felony Provision. We thus vacate
the district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction and
remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.


LEE, Circuit Judge, concurring.

    As the majority opinion points out, the plaintiffs lack
Article III standing to challenge Arizona’s Cancellation
Provision. But even if they had standing, they likely would
not prevail on their claim that the National Voter Registration
Act (NVRA) preempts the Cancellation Provision. The
district court here relied on the reasoning in a pair of
decisions from the Seventh Circuit, the only circuit to have
addressed the reach of NVRA’s section 20507(d)(1).
Because I strongly but respectfully disagree with the Seventh
40    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


Circuit’s textual analysis and expect that this question will
arise in similar challenges, I write separately to offer a
countervailing reading of the statute.
                          * * * *
    An Arizona voter can, of course, lawfully vote only once.
And that is where the Cancellation Provision comes in: It
tries to reduce the risk of someone voting twice in two
jurisdictions by allowing a county recorder to cancel a
voter’s prior registration if she learns that the voter has
moved to a new jurisdiction. The county recorder can do so
only if she either (1) “receives confirmation from another
county recorder that the person registered has registered to
vote in that other county,” A.R.S. § 16-165(A)(10), or (2)
receives “credible information that a person has registered to
vote in a different county,” at which point she “shall confirm
the person’s voter registration with that other county and, on
confirmation, shall cancel the person’s registration,” A.R.S.
§ 16-165(B).
    But in enacting the NVRA, Congress set baseline
procedural requirements that all states must comply with in
removing a registered voter from their voting rolls. Among
other things, the NVRA allows a state to remove a voter if
she has moved to a different jurisdiction. 

(d)(1). There are two ways a county can confirm
that the voter has moved under the NVRA: (1) the voter can
“confirm[] in writing that [she] has changed residence to a
place outside the registrar’s jurisdiction,” or (2) the county
may remove a voter who has not recently voted and does not
respond after receiving notice from the state.             

§ 20507(d)(1)(A), (B).
    Relying heavily on two Seventh Circuit decisions
relating to Indiana state law—Common Cause Indiana v.
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES        41


Lawson, 

 (7th Cir. 2019) and League of Women
Voters of Indiana, Inc. v. Sullivan, 

 (7th Cir.
2021)—the district court held that Arizona’s Cancellation
Provision conflicts with the NVRA. It held that the NVRA’s
requirement that a voter must “confirm[] in writing that [she]
has changed residence to a place outside the registrar’s
jurisdiction” creates a two-step process for confirming that
someone has moved: first, when a state receives the initial
information that a voter may have moved, it must reach out
to the voter; then second, the voter must confirm that she has
indeed moved. According to the district court, only then can
the county recorder remove that voter from the voting roll of
the prior county where she had lived.
     The Seventh Circuit—and the district court here—
hinged their argument on the word “confirm” in the NVRA:
“A plain-meaning reading of the NVRA dictates that the
states need to ‘confirm’ something—in this instance the
initial information [about a change in residence] they
received. It stretches the meaning of ‘confirm’ past its limits
to ignore its key feature of corroborating or verifying a prior
piece [of] knowledge.” Common Cause, 937 F.3d at 962
(emphasis added). In other words, the Seventh Circuit
believed that the word “confirm” creates a two-step process
in which a state (or county) needs to confirm the “initial
information” it receives about a change in residence.
     The district court’s (and the Seventh Circuit’s) reading of
the NVRA is highly questionable both textually and
structurally. The NVRA says nothing about a “state”
confirming any “initial information” it receives about a
change in residence. Rather, it just says that “the registrant
[i.e., the voter] confirms in writing that [she] has changed
residence to a place outside the registrar’s jurisdiction.” 

(d)(1)(A) (emphasis added). So it is the
42    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


voter—not the state—that is confirming the fact that she has
moved. Compare 

 (“the registrant confirms in writing”
(emphasis added)) with Common Cause, 937 F.3d at 962
(“the NVRA then requires that the state . . . ‘confirm’ with
the registrant before removing the person from the rolls”
(emphasis added)).
     And how does a voter “confirm[] in writing that [she] has
changed residence to a place outside the registrar’s
jurisdiction”? One way is by registering to vote in a new
county and affirming under the penalty of perjury that she
now lives in that new jurisdiction. Put another way, the very
act of filling out a form to register in another county is by
itself a written confirmation of the fact that a voter has
changed residence—just as Arizona’s Cancellation
Provision provides. The dissent argues that this reading is
“unmoored from the statutory text.” Dissent at 68. But
filling out a new voting registration form in a new county
obviously can be a “confirm[ation] in writing that [the voter]
has changed residence.” 

(d)(1)(A).
Indeed, the reason why a voter would fill out a new voting
registration form is to alert the county that she has moved
and now lives in a new residence—i.e., to “confirm in
writing that [she] has changed residence.” This type of
confirmation by citizens is common. For example, someone
who buys a car from a dealer must submit a new car
registration form to the DMV. And by filing out the DMV
registration form, the person has confirmed in writing that
she is the owner of a new car.
    Nothing in the text of the NVRA requires the county to
send a separate notice to the voter—and then await a reply
from that voter—to ensure that the voter really meant to say
that she moved when she registered in a different county.
The Seventh Circuit divined this two-step notice process
       ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES               43


solely from the word “confirm.” That single word cannot
bear the load of an intricate two-step statutory scheme that
the district court and the Seventh Circuit impose on it.1
    The district court also reasoned that Arizona’s
Cancellation Provision conflicts with the NVRA because a
“county recorder’s confirmation with another county
recorder [that a voter has moved] is similarly insufficient to
constitute confirmation from the registrant under the
NVRA.” But the “confirmation from the registrant” about a
new residence has already occurred when the voter signed a
voting registration form in a new jurisdiction. The logistics
of one county recorder—whose job is to keep track of voting
registration—contacting another county recorder does not
change the fact that the voter already confirmed in writing
that she moved to a new county.
    We also know that the NVRA does not establish a two-
step confirmation process under § 20507(d)(1)(A) because it
says nothing about it—but the statute does lay out a two-step
confirmation process for a different scenario under
§ 20507(d)(1)(B). As noted earlier, § 20507(d)(1)(B)
establishes an alternative way for a state to remove a voter

1
   The Seventh Circuit later doubled down on its reading of the NVRA
in League of Women Voters, and went even further by saying that under
§ 20507(d)(1)(A) a “state may not remove a voter from its voter rolls
without . . . receiving a direct communication from the voter that she
wishes to be removed.” 

. But there is nothing in
§ 20507(d)(1)(A) that requires a voter to say that she “wishes to be
removed.” It only says that a voter must “confirm[] in writing” that she
has “changed residence” to a new jurisdiction. There is a separate
provision in the NVRA in which a voter can request that she be removed
from the voting rolls. 

(a)(3)(A). In contrast,
§ 20507(d)(1)(A) allows the removal of a person if she has moved and
registered in a new jurisdiction.
44     ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


from the voting rolls: if a voter has not recently voted and
does not respond to a notice from the state, that person can
be removed. The statute outlines how the notice-and-
confirmation process works for removing a voter under this
method—the state must send a “postage prepaid and pre-
addressed return card” “by forwardable mail” under a set
timeline. § 20507(d)(2).
    The dissent relies on this different statutory provision
(for removing voters who have not voted recently) to argue
that the state must also comply with this two-step notice
process for the provision at issue involving voters who have
moved and registered to vote in a new county. Dissent at
65–66. But the statutory provision for removing voters who
have registered to vote elsewhere says nothing about a two-
step process. If Congress wanted a two-step confirmation
process for removing voters under § 20507(d)(1)(A) (for
voters who have registered to vote in a new county), it could
have laid out a process to do so, much like it did in
§ 20507(d)(1)(B) (for voters who have not voted recently).
That § 20507(d)(1)(A) says nothing about a two-step
process is telling, and we should not concoct a confirmation
process when Congress has not uttered a word about it. See
Lamie v. United States Trustee, 

 (2004)
(explaining that it is not the role of the courts to “rewrit[e]
rules that Congress has affirmatively and specifically
enacted”) (citation omitted).2


2
  YCRC points out that the Federal Election Commission’s guidance
states that registration in another state can serve as confirmation of a
change of address. See Implementing the National Voter Registration
Act of 1993: Requirements, Issues, Approaches, and Examples at 5-7 to
5-8 (Jan. 1, 1994). But there is no need to look at FEC guidance because
the statutory text forecloses the plaintiffs’ position.
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES       45


    Indeed, it makes sense why Congress would want
additional protections—through a two-step notice process—
for voters who have not voted recently. Merely not voting
recently does not signify that the voter will not vote in that
county in the future. Perhaps that voter was too busy to vote
or did not support any of the candidates in the last election
but she may want to vote in the next election. In contrast, if
a voter moves and registers to vote in a new county, that is
confirmation that the voter will not—and cannot—vote in
the old county where she no longer lives.
    Another provision of the NVRA also weighs against
reading into that statute a two-step confirmation process for
removing a voter who has confirmed a change of residence
through a new voting registration. That is because a separate
provision of the NVRA mandates that, unless an individual
explicitly states otherwise, “[a]ny change of address form
submitted in accordance with State law for purposes of a
State motor vehicle driver’s license shall serve as
notification of a change of address for voter registration.”

(d). The NVRA then directs state officials
to treat a driver’s license application as “updating any
previous voter registration by the applicant.” § 20504(a)(2).
So if a change of address form submitted for purposes of a
driver’s license can serve as notification of a change of
address for voting purposes, then a new voting registration
also can.
    To be clear, § 20507(d)(1)(A) does not set up a toothless
regime in which states or counties can remove willy-nilly
any voter it suspects of having moved. A state cannot, for
example, rely on a third-party database to remove a voter,
like what Indiana did in Common Cause by using a “third-
party database known as Crosscheck, which aggregates voter
data from multiple states to identify potential duplicate voter
46        ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


registrations.” Common Cause, 937 F.3d at 948. In such a
case, there has been no written confirmation by the voter that
she has moved. But Arizona’s law meets the NVRA’s
written confirmation requirement because the county
recorder—whose job is to maintain voting registration
records—will have received the new voting registration
form by the voter confirming in writing that she has moved
to the new jurisdiction. A.R.S. § 16-165(A), (B). So,
contrary to the reasoning of the Seventh Circuit’s NVRA
decisions and the district court’s reliance on them, there is
no conflict between the NVRA and Arizona’s Cancellation
Provision. And the plaintiffs’ challenge to the Cancellation
Provision would fail even on the merits.


NGUYEN, Circuit Judge, dissenting in part:

    I strongly dissent from the majority’s holding that
plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the Cancellation
Provision.1      The majority’s deeply flawed analysis
improperly conflates standing with the merits; usurps the
district court’s role as factfinder by raising and resolving a
standing issue for the first time on appeal; ignores plaintiffs’
actual evidence; and confuses a third-party standing injury
with the direct organizational injury here. Worse still, the
majority erroneously overrules several cases as
irreconcilable with FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic
Medicine, 

, 395–96 (2024), which breaks no
new ground on the standing doctrine.
   The district court correctly determined, in line with the
Seventh Circuit’s analysis of a similar law, that the

1
    As for the Felony Provision, I concur in the result.
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES     47


Cancellation Provision likely violates the National Voter
Registration Act (“NVRA”). I would therefore affirm the
district court’s injunction as to the Cancellation Provision.
                             I.
                             A.
    According to the majority, the standing analysis turns on
Hippocratic Medicine overruling several of our cases
applying Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 

(1982). But Hippocratic Medicine, which devoted little
more than a page to discussing Havens Realty, merely
“applied traditional standing principles to an organizational
plaintiff,” Maj. Op. at 21, as did Havens Realty itself, see
455 U.S. at 378 (conducting “the same [standing] inquiry as
in the case of an individual”). And it was Havens Realty—
not Hippocratic Medicine—which established that a mere
“setback to the organization’s abstract social interests” is
insufficient to confer standing. Id. at 379. Hippocratic
Medicine is hardly a sea change in the law of organizational
standing.
    The majority mischaracterizes our precedent interpreting
Havens Realty as creating “a two-part test” that “merely”
requires a showing that “a challenged policy (1) frustrated
the organization’s mission or goal, and (2) required the
organization to spend money or divert resources in
response.” Maj. Op. at 16. No Ninth Circuit precedent
describes Havens Realty as a two-part test. While we have
acknowledged that standing can be based on an
organization’s expenditure of resources to address conduct
that frustrates its purpose—as did Havens Realty itself, see
455 U.S. at 379 (finding plaintiff sufficiently established
standing by alleging that it “devote[d] significant resources
to identify and counteract . . . racially discriminatory
48    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


steering practices” that “frustrated . . . its efforts to assist
equal access to housing through counseling and other
referral services”)—we have been careful to explain that
these circumstances alone are not sufficient and that caveats
apply.
    As the majority acknowledges, “[w]e have often said that
Havens Realty does not allow organizations to vindicate
abstract interests or spend their way into Article III
standing.” Maj. Op. at 17. So then how is our case law
incorrect? The majority doesn’t say. Although an
organization’s “mission” may be nothing more than “broad
aspirational goals,” id. at 17 (quoting Nielsen v. Thornell,

 (9th Cir. 2024) (opinion of Lee, J.)),
there is usually substantial overlap between an
organization’s goals and its “core business activities,”
Hippocratic Med., 

. See, e.g., Fair Hous. of
Marin v. Combs, 

, 902–05 (9th Cir. 2002)
(finding “frustration of mission” from injury to the plaintiff
organization’s ability to provide “activities” combatting
housing discrimination).
    Even if the majority is right that some of our decisions
were “less clear” and provided “no detailed analysis” about
the factual basis for standing, Maj. Op. at 17 (quoting
Nielsen, 

 (Collins, J., dissenting)), that does
not make those decisions “clearly irreconcilable with
Hippocratic Medicine,” id. at 7.
                              B.
    By misreading our case law, the majority erects new
barriers to the courthouse for organizations that are directly
injured by legislation. These restrictions find no support in
Hippocratic Medicine or any other case. Instead, the
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES       49


majority grafts third-party standing principles onto a case of
first-party standing.
    According to the majority, the causation element of
standing “may be harder to meet” for organizational
plaintiffs. Id. at 14. That is true only when organizations
seek to vindicate the rights of others. “Claims premised on
the government’s treatment of a third-party must satisfy . . .
stringent constitutional standing requirements.” Kyung Park
v. Holder, 

 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting Shanks
v. Dressel, 

, 1090 n.9 (9th Cir. 2008)). In such
cases, “much more is needed” to show causation and
redressability because these elements’ existence “depends
on the unfettered choices made by independent actors not
before the courts.” Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 

 (1992) (quoting ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 

 (1989) (opinion of Kennedy, J.)).
    But this case involves first-party standing.            See
Hippocratic Med., 

 (“Under this Court’s
precedents, organizations may have standing ‘to sue on their
own behalf for injuries they have sustained.’” (quoting
Havens Realty, 

 n.19)). The majority is
correct that causation normally is “easy” to show when an
individual plaintiff is directly injured by the challenged law,
because the plaintiff need not speculate about what actions
it will take absent relief. Maj. Op. at 14. The analysis is the
same for an organizational plaintiff. See, e.g., Havens
Realty, 

 (finding “no question that the
organization has suffered injury in fact” because the
defendant’s policy brought “concrete and demonstrable
injury to the organization’s activities”); see also 13A Charles
Alan Wright et al., Federal Practice and Procedure
§ 3531.9.5, Westlaw (database updated June 2024) (“Injury
to an organization itself may involve matters no different
50    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


than injury to any person, real or abstract. Standing to
protect against such injury is easily recognized.”).
     Similarly, the majority wrongly asserts that an
organization’s standing requires more scrutiny than that of
individual plaintiffs. See Maj. Op. at 22 (holding that “we
must scrutinize the harm an organization asserts” because
“Hippocratic Medicine clarified that it is tougher for a
plaintiff to establish causation than some of our precedents
suggested”). Tellingly, the majority relies on the portion of
Hippocratic Medicine discussing third-party standing
principles rather than the portion discussing Havens Realty.
See id. (citing 602 U.S. at 382–83). The Supreme Court has
repeatedly explained, however, that the first-party standing
analysis is the same for organizations as it is for individuals.
See Havens Realty, 

; Hippocratic Med., 

 (“Like an individual, an organization may not
establish standing simply based on the ‘intensity of the
litigant’s interest’ or because of strong opposition to the
government’s conduct . . . .” (quoting Valley Forge
Christian Coll. v. Ams. United for Separation of Church &
State, Inc., 

 (1982))).
    Ultimately, the majority’s focus on overruling our
standing precedent is a distraction. There is no reason to
consider the issue because plaintiffs’ standing is consistent
with Hippocratic Medicine. Plaintiffs do not seek to
vindicate abstract social interests; the Cancellation Provision
“directly affect[s] and interfere[s] with” their “core business
activities.” Hippocratic Med., 

.
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES       51


                              II.
                              A.
    The majority’s standing conclusion rests on its
disagreement with plaintiffs’ statutory interpretation. See
Maj. Op. at 24–25 (rejecting plaintiffs’ “implausible reading
of the Cancellation Provision”). Even if plaintiffs misread
the Cancellation Provision—and they do not—that is a
merits question. “[T]he Supreme Court has cautioned that
standing ‘in no way depends on the merits.’” Arizona v.
Yellen, 

 (9th Cir. 2022) (quoting Warth v.
Seldin, 

 (1975)); see Fed. Election
Comm’n v. Cruz, 

, 298 (2022) (“For standing
purposes, we accept as valid the merits of [the plaintiffs’]
legal claims . . . .”); E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Biden
(“E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant II”), 

 (9th
Cir. 2021) (“[A] plaintiff can have standing despite losing on
the merits.”).
    “It is firmly established” that plaintiffs’ statutory
interpretation need only be “arguable” to serve as a basis for
their standing. Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 

 (1998). Federal courts “[have] jurisdiction if ‘the
right of the [plaintiffs] to recover under their complaint will
be sustained if the Constitution and laws . . . are given one
construction and will be defeated if they are given another.’”

 (quoting Bell v. Hood, 

 (1946)). Only
where a claim “clearly appears to be immaterial and made
solely for the purpose of obtaining jurisdiction or . . . is
wholly insubstantial and frivolous” may we dismiss the suit
on standing grounds. 

 (quoting Bell, 327 U.S. at 682–83).
    In Peace Ranch, LLC v. Bonta, for example, we
discussed the “‘Alice in Wonderland air’ about the parties’
arguments” where, as here, the plaintiffs and government
52     ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


defendant disputed a statute’s applicability in the context of
a standing challenge—the plaintiffs arguing it did apply and
the government arguing it did not—despite these positions
being antithetical to the parties’ interests if the court upheld
the statute. 

 (9th Cir. 2024) (quoting Cruz,
596 U.S. at 299). There was “no need to go ‘further down
[the] rabbit hole’” of whether the statute applied, we
explained, because the inquiry would “unavoidably tangle
standing with the merits.” Id. (quoting Cruz, 596 U.S. at
301); see also E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant II, 

(distinguishing the actual or imminent “legally protected
interest” from “an interest protected by statute,” thereby
“prevent[ing] Article III standing requirements from
collapsing into the merits of a plaintiff’s claim”).
    Here, plaintiffs’ statutory interpretation is neither
insubstantial nor frivolous.        Under the Cancellation
Provision, “[i]f the county recorder receives credible
information that a person has registered to vote in a different
county, the county recorder shall confirm the person’s voter
registration with that other county and, on confirmation,
shall cancel the person’s registration.” 

(B).      Plaintiffs’ NVRA claim turns on the
permissible sources of “credible information.” Plaintiffs’
concern is that, contrary to the NVRA, the Cancellation
Provision enables nongovernmental actors to improperly
disenfranchise voters by notifying the county recorder in a
voter’s new residence that the voter has moved to a former
residence.2 On its face, the Cancellation Provision requires

2
  While third parties may attempt to purge registrations maliciously with
the intent of disenfranchising certain types of voters, that need not be the
case. Indeed, the nongovernmental actors may not even be human. See
       ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES                 53


only that the county recorder confirm that the voter is
registered in another county before canceling the voter’s
registration; there is no requirement to determine which
registration was first in time or to contact the voter in
question. Thus, if a voter forgets to affirmatively cancel
registration at a former residence, the county recorder will
confirm the outdated registration and duly cancel the voter’s
most recent and legitimate registration—not by mistake, as
the majority suggests, see Maj. Op. at 25–26—but through
the normal operation of state law.3
    Arizona’s attorney general—the only defendant
opposing the district court’s injunction—and intervenor
Yuma County Republican Committee (“YCRC”) both agree
with plaintiffs’ statutory interpretation.4 They assert that
“[i]f the county recorders were to ignore credible
information . . . from any source other than another county
recorder (or other election official), they would be
knowingly and willfully disregarding th[eir] duty to certify


Common Cause Ind. v. Lawson, 

, 948 (7th Cir. 2019)
(describing Indiana’s use of “a third-party database” that “aggregates
voter data from multiple states to identify potential duplicate voter
registrations”).
3
  Even if the Cancellation Provision did not permit registrars to cancel
the newer of two registrations, as the majority finds, plaintiffs maintain
that it “would still violate the NVRA” because it permits cancellation
without notice to the voter.
4
  Plaintiffs sued Arizona’s attorney general, secretary of state, and
county recorders. The parties stipulated that the county recorders were
nominal parties who would “take no position on the merits” or “oppose
[the] motion for preliminary injunction.” The secretary of state also
requested status as a nominal party, and the district court treated her as
such, leaving the attorney general as the only defendant opposing
injunctive relief. In addition, YCRC intervened to defend the state laws.
54     ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


that the voter lists are accurate.” Even Arizona’s secretary
of state, despite disagreeing with plaintiffs’ statutory
interpretation,5 acknowledges that the Cancellation
Provision “could be interpreted differently.”
    The majority purports to interpret a statute, but then fails
to engage with the statutory text. The majority insists that
the statute requires cancellation of “the old registration” if
“the voter ‘has registered’ in a new county,” Maj. Op. at 25
(quoting 

(B)), but the majority
does not divine this temporal relationship from the text,
which says nothing about an “old” and “new” registration.
Rather, the majority relies on other statutes that address
different situations and contain materially different
language. See 

 at 25 n.3 (discussing Arizona statutes that
expressly apply to “new” registrations).
     Ultimately, it doesn’t matter that the majority’s
conclusory dismissal of the merits is wrong. It is enough,
for standing purposes, that plaintiffs’ statutory interpretation
is at least arguable. The majority errs by requiring more.
                                    B.
    The majority also wrongly dismisses plaintiffs’
imminent injury as “speculative,” Maj. Op. at 24, and
“fanciful,” 

. In doing so, the majority improperly
assumes the role of factfinder and focuses on the wrong
injury.



5
  The Secretary of State interprets the Cancellation Provision to “codify[]
existing voter registration procedures” such that county recorders “would
not initiate voter registration cancellations based solely on information
from non-governmental third parties, because such third-party
information . . . does not constitute ‘credible information.’”
       ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES                   55


                                    1.
     In the district court, no party challenged plaintiffs’
standing to claim that the Cancellation Provision violates the
NVRA for the reasons relied upon by the majority.6
Although we must raise doubts about our subject matter
jurisdiction even when the parties do not, see LA All. for
Human Rts. v. County of Los Angeles, 

 (9th
Cir. 2021), we should not resolve such jurisdictional
concerns ourselves when they turn on factual findings
appropriately made by the district court. See Lewis v. Cont’l
Bank Corp., 

 (1990) (“[T]he evaluation
of . . . factual contentions bearing upon Article III
jurisdiction should not be made by this Court in the first
instance.”); see also California v. Texas, 

(2021) (Thomas, J., concurring) (explaining that “a court of
review, not of first view,” should refrain from addressing a

6
 The Attorney General argued that plaintiffs lacked standing because the
Cancellation Provision merely codified existing practices that plaintiffs
did not challenge. The district court rejected the Attorney General’s
premise, finding that the statute “is not at all identical to the [Elections
Procedure Manual].”
     YCRC argued that plaintiffs lacked standing to assert their due
process challenge to the Cancellation Provision, an argument the district
court did not address because it granted relief on plaintiffs’ NVRA claim.
Standing is assessed on a claim-by-claim basis, see TransUnion LLC v.
Ramirez, 

 (2021), and the two claims involve different
injuries. The alleged due process injury is to voters; YCRC argued that
it was speculative “that the Cancellation Provision might result in a
person’s current voter registration being cancelled.” The alleged NVRA
violation injures plaintiffs directly by forcing them to change their
existing voter outreach programs to address the Cancellation Provision,
as I detail below. In the district court, YCRC did not dispute plaintiffs’
assertion that they would expend resources for that purpose, so it is
unsurprising that YCRC didn’t challenge plaintiffs’ standing to assert an
NVRA claim until we invited them to do so.
56    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


novel standing argument that “the lower courts did not
address . . . in any detail” (quoting Brownback v. King, 

, 215 n.4 (2021))); Cottonwood Env’t L. Ctr. v.
Edwards, 

 (9th Cir. 2023) (citing our
“standard practice” of “remand[ing] to the district court for
a decision in the first instance without requiring any special
justification for so doing” (quoting Detrich v. Ryan, 

 (9th Cir. 2013) (en banc) (lead opinion))).
    We routinely remand for development of jurisdictional
facts when jurisdiction is unclear. See, e.g., Hajro v. USCIS,

 (9th Cir. 2016) (holding that where “the
factual record [was] not sufficiently developed” for the
district court “to determine whether [a litigant] has standing
to bring a . . . claim,” the remedy is to “remand for further
fact finding”); Rivas v. Napolitano, 

, 1112–13
(9th Cir. 2013) (remanding “for the district court to
determine in the first instance whether the court has
jurisdiction” because “[t]he record on appeal [was]
insufficient for us to determine whether jurisdiction exists”);
Aloe Vera of Am., Inc. v. United States, 

(9th Cir. 2009) (ordering “remand . . . to the district court so
that it can determine in the first instance whether there is
sufficient evidence to establish subject matter jurisdiction”
where “[t]he pleadings alone [were] inadequate to make this
determination”).
    In Washington Local Lodge No. 104, two district courts
granted preliminary injunctions, and on appeal we had the
parties brief a jurisdictional issue that we raised sua sponte.
See Wash. Loc. Lodge No. 104 of Int’l Bhd. of Boilermakers
v. Int’l Bhd. of Boilermakers, 

, 1033–34 (9th
Cir. 1980). Because the district courts had not considered
“[t]he crucial jurisdictional question,” the plaintiffs’
justiciability argument lacked “factual substantiation.” Id. at
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES        57


1034. The defendant argued that the plaintiffs’ jurisdictional
allegations were “speculative,” but we had “no way to
evaluate the substance of [the plaintiffs’ jurisdictional]
assertion.” Id. Therefore, we held that “we must remand to
the district courts” to “make findings of fact” and
“determin[e] whether federal jurisdiction exists.” Id. at
1033–34; see also LA All. for Human Rts., 

(vacating injunction and remanding for further proceedings
where the plaintiffs “failed to put forth evidence to establish
standing” and we first raised the jurisdictional issue on
appeal).
    The majority takes the opposite course. Rather than
deferring to any factual findings that the district court might
make, see, e.g., Partington v. Gedan, 

 (9th
Cir. 1992) (“We accept the district court’s factual findings
supporting the exercise of jurisdiction unless the findings are
clearly erroneous.”), the majority makes its own factual
findings. To state the obvious, that is not an appellate court’s
role.
    The unfairness of this approach is particularly acute here,
where plaintiffs had neither reason nor opportunity to
present evidence on the standing issue raised by the majority.
Plaintiffs had no opportunity to make a record regarding, for
example, their core activities, whether the Arizona Voter
Information Database (“AVID”) adequately prevents older
Arizona registrations from cancelling newer ones, and
whether there is any mechanism to prevent older, out-of-
state registrations from cancelling newer, in-state ones. The
58     ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


majority makes improper factual findings on the first two
issues and ignores the third altogether.7
                                  2.
    The majority finds that plaintiffs “can . . . continue their
core activities” unimpeded with the Cancellation Provision
in effect. Maj. Op. at 24. That is directly contrary to
plaintiffs’ sworn declarations.
     Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans (“AARA”) will
need to spend more time advising Arizonans about the
process of casting their ballots because it “will not only need
to ask citizens if they are registered to vote, but also whether
they have any previous addresses, and whether they might
still be registered to vote there.” AARA “does not currently
expend any resources toward identifying voters who have
multiple registrations or helping voters cancel their other
voter registrations.” The Cancellation Provision will require
it to divert scarce resources to these activities, such as by
“creating a training program on how to cancel an out-of-state
or out-of-county voter registration.” These expenditures
“would otherwise be directed toward traditional voter
mobilization efforts” like helping voters register and vote.
    “Voto Latino will need to divert additional time and
resources to monitor for attempted voter purges in Arizona”
because of the Cancellation Provision, which will “make [it]
easier for third parties to engage in coordinated efforts to
target Voto Latino’s core constituency . . . for specious
reasons.” “[T]his tactic has taken place in other states,” and

7
  AVID does not track out-of-state registrations. It focuses on voters
“moving to a different county” within Arizona and attempts to ensure
that they “only have one active voter registration record in Arizona at
any given time.”
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES      59


Voto Latino “is currently engaged in efforts to prevent it.”
Voto Latino also “will be required to launch an educational
campaign informing its constituents about [the Cancellation
Provision] and emphasizing the need for them to check
whether they have multiple voter registrations or active early
voting list memberships.” And like AARA, Voto Latino
“will . . . need to divert its resources, including staff and
volunteer time, to check whether its constituents have voter
registrations in multiple states or Arizona counties and help
them to cancel their non-active registrations.”
    The Cancellation Provision “will require Priorities
[USA] to provide more grant funds to in-state partner
organizations so that [it] can provide education and training”
about the potential for voters to be purged from voter
registration rolls without notice. In addition, Priorities USA
“will spend time and funds on making voters aware that they
need to determine whether they have multiple voter
registrations and that they should cancel any prior
registrations.” Priorities USA would spend these resources
“on true voter mobilization activities” but for the
Cancellation Provision.
    The majority finds that plaintiffs’ core activities are
“register[ing] and educat[ing] voters,” Maj. Op. at 24, and
then dismisses these activities as “mere issue advocacy,” id.
at 27. How is registering voters and educating them about
the voting process “issue advocacy”? For what issue are
plaintiffs advocating? Would the majority describe a high
school civics class as “political indoctrination”? The
majority blatantly mischaracterizes the nature of plaintiffs’
activities.
    Even more disturbing, however, is the majority’s
extraordinarily narrow view of what it means for a law to
60    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


“directly affect[] and interfere[] with” plaintiffs’ core
activities. Hippocratic Med., 

. The majority
holds that plaintiffs lack standing because the Cancellation
Provision does not prevent them from doing the exact same
things in the exact same ways that they have always done.
Virtually no organization could meet that test.
     While plaintiffs could continue to register and educate
voters without changing their practices in response to the
Cancellation Provision, the registrations would be
inadequate, and the education incomplete, under plaintiffs’
view of the law. Registering to vote in Arizona does a person
little good if the registration is subject to cancellation
without notice because the person never knew to cancel a
prior registration.        When legislation renders an
organization’s core business activities inadequate or
incomplete, and the organization must expend resources
modifying the activities to remedy the deficiency, then the
legislation plainly affects and interferes with the activities.
    Under the majority’s reasoning, Havens Realty would
have come out the other way. HOME, a housing counseling
organization, sued Havens Realty, which owned and
operated apartment complexes, over Havens’ racial steering
practices. See 

 The Supreme Court held that HOME had
standing to sue Havens under the Fair Housing Act because
“Havens had provided HOME’s black employees false
information about apartment availability,” which
“perceptibly impaired HOME’s ability to provide
counseling and referral services for low- and moderate-
income homeseekers.” 

 (quoting Havens Realty, 

).
   The majority here, however, would have barred HOME
from the courthouse. After all, Havens’ Fair Housing Act
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES          61


violations did not prevent HOMES from continuing its core
activities of counseling and referring homeseekers to
available housing. To be sure, the housing information was
incomplete because Havens lied about vacancies at its
properties, but HOME could simply have made do with
Havens’ racism and provided its clients with whatever
listings it had. By trying to provide its clients complete and
accurate information, HOME was merely engaging in what
the majority would characterize as “issue advocacy.”
Fortunately, that was not the law in 1982. Unfortunately, it
is now the law of the Ninth Circuit.
                               3.
    We found organizational standing under materially
identical circumstances in East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v.
Trump (“East Bay Sanctuary Covenant I”), 

(9th Cir. 2018), a case cited by plaintiffs that the majority
ignores.      There, four legal services organizations
representing asylum-seekers sued to prevent enforcement of
a rule that categorically barred asylum for migrants who
crossed the southern border between ports of entry. See 

at 761–62. The plaintiffs argued, among other things, that
the rule conflicted with the Immigration and Naturalization
Act. See 

 The district court enjoined the government from
enforcing the rule. See 

    We held that the plaintiffs had organizational standing
because the challenged rule would require “a diversion of
resources, independent of expenses for [the] litigation, from
their other initiatives.” 

. Through declarations, the
plaintiffs established that if the rule took effect, they “would
be forced at the client intake stage to ‘conduct detailed
screenings for alternative forms of relief to facilitate referrals
or other forms of assistance’” and, because alternative forms
62    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


of relief “do not allow a principal applicant to file a
derivative application for family members,” the plaintiffs
would “have to submit a greater number of applications for
family-unit clients.” 

 The plaintiffs also planned “to
undertake[] education and outreach initiatives regarding the
new rule.” 

 We found that the diversion of plaintiffs’
resources to conduct these activities, made necessary by the
rule, was sufficient to establish organizational standing. See

    Thus, we held that organizational plaintiffs can show a
diversion of resources—and thereby establish standing—
when, in response to a challenged rule or law, they will spend
more time assessing the needs of each person they serve and
expend additional resources educating the population they
serve. Just as the East Bay plaintiffs needed to spend more
time screening clients for potential alternatives to asylum
relief and filing a greater number of applications for such
relief, plaintiffs here will need to spend more time verifying
whether voters have cancelled registrations at their prior
residences. And just as the East Bay plaintiffs needed to
spend additional resources educating noncitizens about the
new asylum rule, plaintiffs here must do the same to educate
voters about the need to cancel prior registrations. By
ignoring East Bay Sanctuary Covenant I, the majority
creates an intra-circuit split. And it creates an inter-circuit
split as well. See Common Cause Ind., 937 F.3d at 954–55
(holding, under similar circumstances, that organizations
had standing to challenge Indiana voting law as inconsistent
with the NVRA based on a diversion-of-resources theory).
                              4.
    The majority minimizes the likelihood of harm to
plaintiffs by focusing on the wrong injury. Plaintiffs assert,
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES       63


definitively, that they will divert resources, and they explain
how and why they will do so. The only assumption that
plaintiffs make—an entirely reasonable one—is that voters
do not always affirmatively cancel their former registrations.
    Once again, the majority muddles the distinction
between first- and third-party standing, identifying the injury
as: “the Cancellation Provision may cause a county recorder
to cancel the voter’s new registration instead of the old one.”
Maj. Op. at 24. The majority fails to mention the lack of
notice. But these are injuries to the voter. They are relevant
only to plaintiffs’ third-party standing. See Common Cause
Ind., 937 F.3d at 963 (Brennan, J., concurring) (“People
vote, not organizations, so none of the [organizational]
plaintiffs before us may cast a vote in any election.”). The
injury at issue—plaintiffs’ diversion of resources to ensure
that voters cancel prior registrations—is certain to occur if
the Cancellation Provision takes effect.
    Because the Cancellation Provision can be interpreted as
plaintiffs fear, it makes no difference whether the current
Arizona election officials adopt that interpretation. Unless a
court prohibits it, nothing stops them from doing so. Voters
may leave their registration status in place through multiple
political administrations, so plaintiffs cannot blithely assume
that no future administration would cancel valid registrations
without notice to the voter based on information from third
parties that the administration deems “credible.” 

(B). Plaintiffs would be remiss not to
divert resources now to minimize the substantial impact that
a less favorable interpretation of the Cancellation Provision
could have and elsewhere has had.
64     ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


                         *        *        *
    Plaintiffs have established their organizational standing
to challenge the Cancellation Provision, and the majority is
clearly wrong in holding otherwise.
                                 III.
    The district court did not abuse its discretion in
preliminarily enjoining the Cancellation Provision. Because
the majority does not reach this issue,8 I will only briefly
summarize why I would affirm that aspect of the injunction.
    To establish their entitlement to injunctive relief,
plaintiffs must show that they are likely to succeed on the
merits and to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of
preliminary relief, and that the balance of equities tips in
their favor. See Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 

 (2008); Porretti v. Dzurenda, 

, 1050
(9th Cir. 2021) (“The third and fourth factors of the
preliminary-injunction test—balance of equities and public
interest—merge into one inquiry when the government
opposes a preliminary injunction.”).
                                  A.
    Turning to the merits, the NVRA provides that, in
general, “the name of a registrant [i.e., registered voter] may
not be removed from the official list of eligible voters
except . . . at the request of the registrant.” 

(a)(3)(A). If the voter does not make such a request,


8
  Judge Lee’s concurrence explains why he would reverse the district
court if, hypothetically, the majority had jurisdiction to consider the
merits. But see Steel Co., 

 (rejecting “a doctrine of
‘hypothetical jurisdiction’ that enables a court to resolve contested
questions of law when its jurisdiction is in doubt”).
       ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES                 65


election officials may remove her name only due to death,
criminal conviction, mental incapacity, or, as relevant here,
“a change in [her] residence.” 

 § 20507(a)(4)(B); see id.
§ 20507(a)(3)–(4). “A State shall not remove the name of a
registrant . . . on the ground that the registrant has changed
residence unless the registrant” either “confirms in writing”
that she has moved outside the registrar’s jurisdiction or “has
failed to respond” to a notice.9 Id. § 20507(d)(1)(A), (B)(i).
    The Cancellation Provision plainly conflicts with the
NVRA because it allows state election officials to cancel a
voter’s registration without input from or notice to the voter.
The NVRA allows states to cancel a voter’s registration due
to a change in residence only pursuant to a state program that
is uniform and nondiscriminatory. Id. § 20507(a)(4)(1),
(b)(1). The Cancellation Provision allows an Arizona
registrar to cancel a voter’s registration pursuant to
information provided by a third party, not pursuant to a state
program, and there is no guarantee that the third party
gathered the information in a uniform and nondiscriminatory
way.
    YCRC argues that a voter’s conduct—in particular, a
voter’s registration in another Arizona county—amounts to
a “request of the registrant” to be removed from the list of
eligible voters in her original county. Id. § 20507(a)(3)(A).
Alternatively, YCRC contends that registering in another
county amounts to “confirm[ing] in writing” that the



9
  The notice must inform the registrant that her name will be removed
from the list of eligible voters if she does not respond. 

(d)(2)(A). In lieu of returning the notice card, she can vote in at
least one of the next two federal elections to avoid having her name
purged. See 

 § 20507(d)(1)(B)(ii).
66    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


registrant has moved outside her original jurisdiction. Id.
§ 20507(d)(1)(A).
    But conduct is not a request or a confirmation;
registering in another jurisdiction “is only an action that
allows an inference that the voter is relinquishing her” right
to vote in the original jurisdiction, and “the NVRA requires
more than such an inference.” Common Cause Ind., 937
F.3d at 960. A voter may register to vote in another
jurisdiction where she temporarily resides without intending
to cancel her registration in the original jurisdiction,
particularly if that jurisdiction is her domicile, to which she
intends to return. “While double voting is surely illegal,
having two open voter registrations is a different issue
entirely. In the overwhelming majority of states, it is not
illegal to be registered to vote in two places.” Id. (cleaned
up).
    YCRC insists that the Cancellation Provision applies
only to persons with registrations in two Arizona counties
and that Arizona’s voting system ensures that a new Arizona
registration automatically cancels the old.           But the
Cancellation Provision is not limited to the intrastate
context. It applies whenever an Arizona county recorder
learns of a voter’s registration “in a different county,” 

(B), which could be a different
county in another state. And even if YCRC were correct
about the Cancellation Provision’s geographic scope, there
would be no need for it if Arizona’s system worked as
perfectly as YCRC supposes. To the extent the law was
designed to correct errors, it violates the NVRA by allowing
for such error correction without the voter’s participation.
    Judge Lee argues that “[t]he NVRA says nothing about
a ‘state’ confirming any ‘initial information’ it receives
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES           67


about a change in residence.” Lee Concurrence at 41
(emphasis omitted). I agree. The “confirmation” at issue in
the NVRA has nothing to do with states receiving
information from third parties about a voter’s registration in
another jurisdiction; rather, it has to do with states inferring
a voter’s intent to be removed from the voter list due to the
state’s suspicion that the voter has moved and the voter’s
repeated failure to vote.
    The NVRA provides that “the name of a registrant may
not be removed from the official list of eligible voters” due
to “a change in the residence of the registrant” unless the
state “conduct[s] a general program” that is “in accordance
with subsections (b), (c), and (d)” of § 20507. 

(a)(3), (4), (4)(B). Under § 20507(b), entitled
“[c]onfirmation of voter registration,” the NVRA provides
that the registrar may only remove the voter’s name after
“[two] or more consecutive general elections” have passed
and, during that time, the voter has neither “notified the
applicable registrar . . . [n]or responded . . . to the notice sent
by the applicable registrar” nor “appeared to vote.” Id.
§ 20507(b)(2)(A)–(B).
    Subsection (c) allows states to update a voter’s
registration records without confirmation if the voter moves
within the registrar’s jurisdiction and submits a change-of-
address form to the Postal Service. If the voter moves out of
the registrar’s jurisdiction and submits a change-of-address
form, the registrar must “use[] the notice procedure
described in subsection (d)(2) to confirm the change of
address.” 

(c)(1)(B)(ii).
    Judge Lee’s interpretation, that “the very act of filling
out a form to register in another county is by itself a written
confirmation of the fact that a voter has changed residence,”
68    ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES


Lee Concurrence at 42, is unmoored from the statutory text.
The NVRA is extremely clear that a voter “confirms” a
changed residence by contacting the registrar at the old
residence or returning the notice.       See 

(b)(2)(A). Contacting the registrar at the new
residence accomplishes neither.
    Judge Lee’s interpretation also ignores the legislative
history. The purpose of requiring voter confirmation of a
change of address is “to prohibit selective or discriminatory
purge programs,” including “lists provided by other parties.”
H.R. Rep. No. 103-9, at 15 (1993). Congress described
§ 20507(d)(1)(A) specifically as providing that “[n]o State
may remove the name of a voter from the rolls due to
possible change of address unless the registrant confirms in
writing to have moved out of voting jurisdiction.” H.R. Rep.
No. 103-66, at 21 (1993) (Conf. Rep.) (emphasis added).
Thus, Congress recognized that a registrar may suspect a
voter has moved, perhaps because the voter registered to
vote in another jurisdiction, and Congress prohibited a purge
based solely on that suspicion. The NVRA prohibits the
registrar from acting until the voter confirms the move in
writing or fails to respond to a notice.
    In my view, the district court correctly found that
plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their
challenge to the Cancellation Provision.
                              B.
    The district court did not abuse its discretion in finding
that plaintiffs are likely to suffer irreparable harm absent an
injunction against the Cancellation Provision. As the district
court observed, plaintiffs “must divert resources to combat
the negative effects of the law,” and plaintiffs cannot recover
the lost use of limited resources.
      ARIZONA ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS V. MAYES      69


    Nor did the district court err in finding that the balance
of equities favors plaintiffs. The district court properly
“weigh[ed], in addition to the harms attendant upon issuance
or nonissuance of an injunction, considerations specific to
election cases and its own institutional procedures.” Purcell
v. Gonzalez, 

 (2006) (per curiam). “[T]he
Supreme Court in Purcell did not set forth a per se
prohibition against enjoining voting laws on the eve of an
election.” Feldman v. Ariz. Sec’y of State’s Off., 

 (9th Cir. 2016) (en banc) (emphasis omitted). Here,
most importantly, the district court’s injunction does not
“disrupt long standing state procedures” because it merely
“preserves the status quo prior to the recent legislative
action.” 

 at 368–69 (emphasis omitted).
                      *       *       *
   Respectfully, I strongly dissent from the majority’s
conclusion that plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the
Cancellation Provision, and I would affirm the district
court’s order enjoining it.