When does a plaintiff have a sufficient stake in a dispute to give them standing to sue? A recent Minnesota Supreme Court decision illustrates the ways that states differ from federal courts in regulating citizens’ access to the courtroom.

Earlier this month, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the state’s Re-Enfranchisement Act, which restored voting rights to approximately 60,000 Minnesotans with felony convictions. The plaintiffs in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Hunt argued that the Minnesota Constitution, which provides that individuals with felony convictions are ineligible to vote unless “restored to civil rights,” prohibits the legislature from restoring voting rights unless it also restores other civil rights lost due to a felony conviction, such as the right to serve on a jury. Because the Re-Enfranchisement Act only restored the right to vote, plaintiffs argued, it violated the state constitution.

It was, in my view, a dubious argument, particularly given an earlier Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that seemed to invite the exact law that was eventually passed. Ultimately, however, the court didn’t decide the case on the merits. Rather, the court held that the plaintiffs, individual taxpayers and an association to which they belong (which describes itself as an “election integrity group”), lacked standing to bring the suit in the first place.

Standing is the question of whether a given plaintiff has a sufficiently real connection to a dispute to establish a basis to bring a lawsuit in court. For cases in federal court, Article III of the U.S. Constitution requires a case or controversy, which the Supreme Court has interpreted to mean that plaintiffs must show they have a concrete injury, traceable to the challenged conduct, and likely to be redressable by a favorable court ruling. It’s a standard that makes it very difficult to challenge certain kinds of illegal conduct: if the impact on any given individual is speculative, or if an impacted plaintiff can’t point to a concrete injury, standing doctrine likely means that they won’t even get into the federal courtroom.

But state courts are another story. State courts aren’t bound by the U.S. Constitution’s case or controversy requirement, and in fact, most state constitutions lack similar language. While state courts normally do require some form of injury in order to bring a lawsuit, many define injury more expansively than their federal counterparts. Exceptions also abound — from doctrines allowing state courts to hear cases of high public importance to provisions allowing for advisory opinions.

In Minnesota Voters Alliance, the plaintiffs relied on a theory of taxpayer standing, arguing that they were injured because their tax dollars would be used to notify and educate impacted people about voter eligibility changes that they argued were illegal. Under federal standing principles, taxpayer standing is almost always a nonstarter (with narrow exceptions for certain cases under the Establishment Clause and claims brought by local taxpayers against municipalities), because it’s seen as a way of asserting a generalized grievance against government conduct.

But taxpayer standing is widely recognized in state courts: a 2012 law review article found that at least 36 states, including Minnesota, permit taxpayer lawsuits. However, while Minnesota Voters Alliance recognized the continued viability of taxpayer standing, it also clarified its limits. Taxpayer standing, the court explained, allows taxpayers who are not directly or personally injured by a law to challenge an illegal expenditure of funds. But expenditures that are only “incidental to implementing the law” can’t form a basis for taxpayer standing — otherwise, it would allow for virtually any law to be challenged by taxpayers. In the case of the Re-Enfranchisement Act, because the law’s focus is the restoration of voting rights, the mere fact that there are some public expenditures associated with implementing the law isn’t enough to create taxpayer standing.

There’s much more to say about standing, including, as detailed in a recent State Court Report piece, how some states are embracing more rigorous standing requirements when it comes to abortion litigation. But Minnesota Voters Alliance is a good case study for understanding standing in the states, including the policy tradeoffs reflected in questions of how broadly standing should be defined. There’s such a thing as making litigation too easy, and defining taxpayer standing too broadly risks a deluge of cases that can burden the courts and other litigants. But by not reaching the merits, the Minnesota high court also left legal uncertainty around voter eligibility while a high-stakes election looms.

“The U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent abortion cases ended in an anticlimactic fashion,” writes University of California, Davis, law professor Mary Ziegler. “State courts, by contrast, have issued dramatic and wide-ranging abortion rulings this summer.” Ziegler summarizes cases both limiting and expanding abortion rights across multiple states — including Iowa, Kansas, Texas, and Utah — and previews pending litigation in Michigan and Wisconsin. “These cases highlight the importance of both upcoming state supreme court elections and ongoing debates within state courts about the relationship between state and federal constitutional law,” she writes. Read more

Drafters of state constitutions dedicated extensive thought and conversation to how to protect the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — words that appear in two-thirds of all state constitutions. Anthony Sanders, the director of the Center for Judicial Engagement at the Institute for Justice, describes these historical debates, which he argues could “assist those fighting for our natural and inalienable rights.” Read more

A few state constitutions peg their search and seizure protections to the federal Fourth Amendment, requiring states to follow federal law. University of Oklahoma law professor Stephen Henderson describes these provisions and argues that even in these states, “things are not as ‘lockstep’ as they first appear.” Read more

In the aftermath of Dobbs, some state courts have introduced new limits on who can challenge abortion bans, including barring physicians who provide abortions from pursuing such lawsuits. “Preventing abortion providers from having third-party standing for their patients amplifies the damage to the lives and liberty of countless people who cannot obtain the abortion care they need,” argues Christine L. Stanley, chief legal counsel of Planned Parenthood of Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, and Kentucky. Read more

The Florida Supreme Court recently upheld Gov. Ron DeSantis’s suspension of an elected prosecutor because she declined to seek mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes, which he said showed “incompetence” and a “neglect of duty.” It’s part of a troubling trend, write the Brennan Center’s Lauren-Brooke Eisen and Ram Subramanian, of “lawmakers and other state officials seeking to undermine or remove elected prosecutors whose policy choices they disagree with.” Read more

Planned Parenthood Association of Utah v. Utah, Utah Supreme Court
Upheld a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the state’s near-total abortion ban. // New York Times

Planned Parenthood of Montana v. Montana, Montana Supreme Court
Ruled that minors have a fundamental right to privacy and do not have to seek parental permission to get an abortion in the state. The state legislature had passed a law requiring such consent in 2013, but an injunction issued that year meant it never went into effect. // Associated Press

Arizona for Abortion Access v. Ben Toma, Arizona Supreme Court
Ruled that the term “unborn human being” can appear in pamphlets mailed to voters describing a proposed abortion rights state constitutional amendment that will appear on this fall’s ballot. Proponents of the amendment had argued that the language did not meet state law requirements that descriptions be impartial. // Associated Press

Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Adrian Fontes, Superior Court, Maricopa County
Temporarily blocked portions of the state’s manual on election procedures meant to combat harassment of voters and election workers, such as measures prohibiting aggressive behavior and insulting language, as violations of state constitutional free speech guarantees. // Democracy Docket

You can find briefs and opinions from notable state constitutional lawsuits in our State Case Database.