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On what grounds did the court decide that this ruling only applies to those two counties?
Short answer: They didn't. The declaratory judgment invalidating the strict dating provisions as unconstitutional applies to all 67 counties.
Long answer: The plaintiffs only sued Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties. Since those counties declined to defend the suit, the Republicans (the RNC and the PA equivalent) intervened as defendants. They then filed a motion to dismiss on the basis that the plaintiffs failed to join all necessary parties. Civil procedure requires that certain "indispensable" parties be joined in a lawsuit. Typically this is for stuff like contracts involving multiple parties or property with multiple owners, where the court needs to sort out what everyone's rights and obligations are. The defendant intervenors argues that since any declaratory relief would apply to all 67 counties, the plaintiffs should have joined the other 65. The court didn't buy this argument; the plaintiffs said that the reason they only sued 2 counties is because those were the only counties where they had knowledge that voters were being harmed by the dating provisions. If the court had dismissed the suit on the grounds that the plaintiffs hadn't joined all necessary parties, the plaintiffs would have refiled the next day naming all 67 counties as defendants. At that point, the 65 counties who weren't sued the first time would have moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, and the court would have been forced to grant those motions. The court didn't say this in so many words, but suffice it to say that if a court knows that an action against a party won't survive a motion to dismiss, they're loathe to find that party "indispensable" to the proceeding, especially if there are 65 such parties. The court can't issue injunctions against non-parties, so injunctive relief was only granted against Philadelphia and Allegheny counties by virtue of them being the only named defendants. The technical distinction is that they've been specifically ordered to stop something they were already doing. We officially don't know if the other counties were doing anything offensive to the state constitution or not, but the declaratory judgment clearly delineates what they aren't allowed to do in the future. Pinging @urquan since his comment touches on these issues.
Please use more paragraphs, they make text much easier to read.
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Makes sense, thanks for the clarification.
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I think just that only those two parties were part of the suit.
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