UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

┐ TENNESSEE CONFERENCE OF THE NATIONAL │ ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED │ PEOPLE, on behalf of itself and its members, │ Plaintiffs-Appellees, │ > No. 24-5546 │ v. │ │ WILLIAM BYRON LEE, et al., │ Defendants, │ │ │ MARK GOINS, in his official capacity as Coordinator of │ Elections for the State of Tennessee; TRE HARGETT, in │ his official capacity as Secretary of the State of │ Tennessee, │ Defendants-Appellants. │ ┘

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee at Nashville. No. 3:20-cv-01039—William Lynn Campbell, Jr., District Judge.

Decided and Filed: June 28, 2024

Before: BUSH, LARSEN, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. _________________

COUNSEL ON MOTION: J. Matthew Rice, Philip Hammersley, Zachary Barker, Dawn Jordan, OFFICE OF THE TENNESSEE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellants. ON RESPONSE: Charles K. Grant, Denmark J. Grant, BAKER, DONELSON, BEARMAN, CALDWELL & BERKOWITZ, PC, Nashville, Tennessee, Blair S. Bowie, Alice C.C. Huling, Valencia Richardson, Ellen M. Boettcher, Kate Uyeda, CAMPAIGN LEGAL CENTER, Washington, D.C., for Appellees. No. 24-5546 Tenn. Conference of the NAACP, et al. v. Lee, et al. Page 2

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OPINION _________________

PER CURIAM. Tennessee law permits many convicted felons to vote, but it prohibits many others from exercising the franchise. When processing registration forms submitted by felons, then, state election officials must distinguish applicants who are eligible from those who are not. To facilitate this review, these officials require some felon applicants to submit records with their registration forms to confirm their eligibility. In this suit, the Tennessee Conference of the NAACP alleged that this so-called “Documentation Policy” for felon applicants violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). A district court recently agreed and permanently enjoined the policy in the middle of the 2024 election cycle. Tennessee’s Secretary of State and Coordinator of Elections seek a stay of this injunction pending appeal.

We grant the stay for two reasons. First, the injunction triggers the Supreme Court’s “Purcell principle,” which instructs federal courts not to disrupt state election rules close to an election. See Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1, 4–5 (2006) (per curiam). And here, the district court issued its injunction less than a month before the looming July 2 registration deadline for an August election. Second, the NAACP likely did not present enough evidence to prove its standing to challenge the Documentation Policy. The NAACP claimed that the policy forced