By Matthew Santoni

Law360 (July 20, 2020, 7:54 PM EDT) -- President Donald Trump's reelection campaign will get a chance to oppose Pennsylvania's mail-in ballot procedures before the November election, albeit with limits on what it can seek in discovery and a potentially faster schedule for motions to dismiss, a federal judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan on Friday partially granted the motion for a speedy hearing sought by the campaign, the Republican National Committee and several Republican candidates in their challenge to some Pennsylvania counties that offered "drop boxes" and mobile collections for mail-in ballots, but the judge denied their motion for expedited discovery.

The hearing will take place Sept. 22-23 in Pittsburgh; discovery will focus mainly on a report from the state, due Aug. 1, on the administration of the primary election; and parties were encouraged to file their motions to dismiss by July 24 or to join in other parties' motions when their arguments were substantially the same, Judge Ranjan wrote.

"The court is also mindful, however, of the need to ensure proportionality in discovery, especially in light of the expedited timeline, and defendants' competing obligations to administer the upcoming general election," his order said Friday. "As such, the court will encourage early filing of all dispositive motions, and narrow the scope of any expedited discovery to mainly focus on the information in the August 1, 2020, report on the primary election, which is information that defendants have stated that they can readily provide."

Trump's campaign and other Republicans sued in late June, claiming that several aspects of the June primary election invited fraud and violated voters' constitutional rights by "diluting" their votes with allegedly fraudulent ballots or by unevenly applying rules about where drop boxes would be available. The plaintiffs took issue with some counties providing drop boxes and mobile collection drives for absentee or mail-in ballots, counting ballots without their privacy envelopes, and the state requiring that campaign poll watchers live in the county where they monitor the vote.

They sought a speedy declaratory judgment hearing that would block the drop boxes from being used in November, or at least make them subject to the same public notice and poll watchers at regular polling places. Otherwise they claimed that the vote would be vulnerable to fraud, though a response from Pennsylvania Democrats said there had been no evidence that any fraud took place during the primary.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar told the court on July 13 that the state and counties should have a chance to dismiss the case before they had to go through discovery and the hearing itself, arguing that most of the answers the campaign sought about mail-in and absentee voting would be included in the state's Aug. 1 report.

Judge Ranjan agreed that motions to dismiss would come first, though he made an accelerated schedule for those filings optional. The normal deadline for such motions, the state noted, would be Sept. 8.

"The court encourages defendants who wish to expedite the process to file Rule 12 motions by July 24, 2020. Indeed, if defendants raise threshold standing or abstention arguments, motions to dismiss on those grounds should be filed as quickly as possible," he wrote. Replies would have to be filed within seven days, and sur-replies would not be permitted.

The parties were ordered to meet by July 22 to discuss the scope of discovery, with written discovery requests due July 24 and responses due Aug. 5.

"The court notes that, at a minimum, the August 1, 2020, report ... should be produced by defendant Secretary Boockvar to all other parties (including any intervenors)," the judge ordered. "Any additional discovery beyond that must ... not be duplicative of materials received in connection with the report; and ... be narrowly tailored to the implementation of the mail-in and poll-watching procedures in the 2020 primary election, and the procedures for the 2020 general election."

Pennsylvania's Democratic Party and several Democratic candidates had sought to intervene in the lawsuit and dismiss it, saying they had filed their own suit asking the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania for a declaratory judgment upholding the same practices the Republicans sought to throw out. State court was a better forum for interpreting state election law, the motion to dismiss had said.

Other voting-rights groups, including the NAACP, the ACLU and the League of Women Voters had also wanted to intervene in the federal case. The judge had not ruled Monday on the potential intervenors' motions.

Representatives of the secretary of state declined to comment Monday. Representatives of the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Trump campaign and Republicans are represented by Ronald L. Hicks Jr., Jeremy A. Mercer and Russell D. Giancola of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP, and Matthew Morgan and Justin R. Clark of Elections LLC.

The Pennsylvania Department of State and Boockvar are represented by Timothy E. Gates and Kathleen M. Kotula of the State Department's Office of Chief Counsel, Kenneth L. Joel and M. Abbegael Giunta of the Governor's Office of General Counsel, and Karen M. Romano, Keli M. Neary, Howard G. Hopkirk, Nicole Boland and Stephen Moniak of the Pennsylvania attorney general's office.

The case is Donald J. Trump for President Inc. et al. v. Boockvar et al., case number 2:20-cv-00966, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

--Editing by Adam LoBelia.

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