Case: 20-50407 Document: 00515441096 Page: 11 Date Filed: 06/04/2020 No. 20-50407 plaintiff must demonstrate (1) that he or she suffered an injury in fact that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent, (2) that the injury was caused by the defendant, and (3) that the injury would likely be redressed by the requested judicial relief.” Thole v. U.S. Bank N.A., No. 17-1712, 2020 WL 2814294, at *2 (U.S. June 1, 2020). The state officials assert that the plaintiffs cannot satisfy the last two prongs, because “[a]cceptance or rejection of an application to vote by mail falls to local, rather than state, officials.” Our precedent, however, poses a significant obstacle. In OCA-Greater Houston v. Texas, 867 F.3d 604, 612–13 (5th Cir. 2017), we considered a challenge to Texas Election Code section 61.033, which requires an interpreter to “be a registered voter of the county in which the voter needing the interpreter resides.” Texas averred that the second and third standing factors were not satisfied, because the plaintiff’s injury was caused by local election officials— who determined whether a voter could serve as an interpreter—not the state or its Secretary of State. Id. at 613. The panel rejected that position, holding that the “invalidity of a Texas election statute is, without question, fairly traceable to and redressable by . . . its Secretary of State, who serves as the ‘chief election officer of the state.’” Id. (quoting TEX. ELEC. CODE § 31.001(a)). So too here. Texas’s vote-by-mail statutes are administered, at least in in the first instance, by local election officials. 18 But the Secretary of State has the duty to “obtain and maintain uniformity in the application, operation, and interpretation of” Texas’s election laws, including by “prepar[ing] detailed and comprehensive written directives and instructions relating to” those vote-bymail rules. TEX. ELEC. CODE § 31.003. And the Secretary of State has the See TEX. ELEC. CODE § 83.005 (“The city secretary is the early voting clerk for an election ordered by an authority of a city.”); id. § 86.001(a) (“The early voting clerk shall review each application for a ballot to be voted by mail.”). 18 11

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