Opinion
CV-21-01423-PHX-DWL
08-04-2023
Mi Familia Vota, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Katie Hobbs, et al., Defendants.
ORDER
DOMINIC W. LANZA, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
The Court has now completed its in camera review of the documents that Legislators withheld pursuant to the state legislative privilege. (Doc. 240.) Based on that review, the withheld documents are not more relevant and/or valuable to Plaintiffs' claims than the Court assumed when considering them in the abstract. (Doc. 237 at 19-25.) The in camera review thus confirms that the balancing test supports applying the state legislative privilege in this case and that Legislators should be allowed to withhold the documents based on that privilege. (Id. at 27 [“[T]he existence of unresolved questions over the withheld documents' relevance does not mean that the qualified privilege has been overcome on the present record. Nevertheless, the Court would be in an even better position to perform the balancing analysis (and, potentially, recalibrate its conclusions as to the first factor, which addresses the relevance of the withheld documents) if aware of the actual contents of those documents.”].)