WaPo: Rep. John Lewis and several of his Democratic colleagues broke down in tears during a closed-door meeting Tuesday after a historian described the congressman’s reaction when he saw his great-great-grandfather’s voter registration card for the first time.The House Democratic … Continue reading
Category Archives: Voting Rights Act
Release: Today, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), with co-counsel, Arkie Byrd of Mays, Byrd & O’Guinn, P.A., and the law firm of Shearman & Sterling, LLP filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Black voters challenging the … Continue reading
Think Progress: A group of black voters is challenging Mississippi’s racist, Jim Crow-era laws that try to give a decided advantage to white candidates vying for statewide office, ahead of a critically important election for governor that is expected to … Continue reading
You can find the ruling at this link. … Continue reading
Michael Morley has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Tulsa Law Review). Here is the abstract: This invited essay reviews Jesse H. Rhodes’s book Ballot Blocked: The Political Erosion of the Voting Rights Act. The book’s main thesis is that Republican officials … Continue reading
Court order. (Dated May 10.) There’s a rulemaking in progress for new rules in time for 2020. … Continue reading
Read it here. … Continue reading
Alexa Ura for the Texas Tribune: Back in the federal courthouse where most of an eight year-long case has played out, the fight over forcing Texas back under federal oversight of its mapmaking appeared to hinge on whether the state … Continue reading
WaPo column: Our nation faces a constitutional conflagration, and President Trump is not the only actor willing to put personal and partisan interests above the preservation of our system of self-rule.Five conservative justices on the Supreme Court signaled clearly on … Continue reading
News & Observer: North Carolina and South Carolina would face federal oversight of election law changes if a new Democratic bill to update the Voting Rights Act passes — and the U.S. House of Representatives held a field hearing in … Continue reading
Daily Kos: Angry that voters passed a ballot initiative to increase the minimum wage in 2018, Arkansas Republicans are using their legislative majorities to put a constitutional amendment on the 2020 ballot that would make it vastly harder for progressives—but not conservatives—to ever … Continue reading
The Tampa Bay Times reports. … Continue reading
ABA Journal: A dissent by Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement in a Mississippi gerrymandering case is raising some questions and eyebrows. What, exactly, did the federal appeals judge mean when she wrote that the state defendants “have simply had the … Continue reading
Steve Mazie for the Economist. … Continue reading
Release from the Laywers’ Committee via email: Last night, a federal appeals court ordered Mississippi officials to redraw district lines for a state senate district in the Mississippi Delta, leaving undisturbed the finding by federal district judge Carlton Reeves that … Continue reading
Very readable Amy Howe preview at SCOTUSBlog of Bethune Hill II. … Continue reading
Voice of OC: “The imposition of at-large elections by the City of Orange has resulted in vote dilution for the Latino residents and has denied them effective political participation in elections to the five-member Orange City Council,” reads the Feb. … Continue reading
The House Oversight Committee asked Georgia Governor Brian Kemp today for a set of documents related to voters’ difficulties in Georgia in 2018. So far, it’s just a request. And Kemp appears unimpressed. … Continue reading
WaPo’s FactChecker reviews some of Hillary Clinton’s claims about the 2016 election at the Selma Bloody Sunday commemorative service for this past weekend. … Continue reading
Salon asks. The answer is no. … Continue reading
Adam Liptak: According to data gathered by Stephen L. Wasby, an emeritus professor of political science at the University at Albany, Justice Thomas has written more than 250 concurring or dissenting opinions seriously questioning precedents, calling for their reconsideration or suggesting … Continue reading
The Hill reports: Several Democratic presidential hopefuls visited Selma, Ala., on Sunday to commemorate the 54th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” civil rights march in the city.Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who have each announced their 2020 candidacies, were among those in attendance for … Continue reading
Pointed remarks from Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) on today’s Face the Nation: Well, you know I think if you look at– carefully you have to look at the state legislatures, governors and members of Congress that are Republicans. For whatever … Continue reading
LA Times: ” [A] conservative group is backing Poway’s former mayor in a federal court fight, arguing that the California [Voting Rights Act] forces ethnic gerrymandering on unwilling citizens and their elective bodies. The case is before the U.S. 9th … Continue reading
Guest post from Travis Crum: Democrats in the House and Senate recently unveiled the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019 (“VRAA”), the latest version in a series of bills intended to restore the coverage formula invalidated in Shelby County v. … Continue reading
The Guardian: But Sewell and her colleagues are playing a long game in the hope that Democrats, should theyregain control of the White House and both chambers of Congress as they did most recently in 2008, would then be able … Continue reading
You can find the 71-page statement of decision at this link. Given the findings of both CVRA liability as well as intentional racial discrimination in using an at-large voting system in violation of the California Constitution, a path forward on … Continue reading
The following is a guest post from Travis Crum [cross-posted at Take Care]: Last August, the three-judge district court overseeing the Texas redistricting litigation issued a briefing order on whether the State of Texas should be “bailed-in” under Section 3(c) … Continue reading
Court order (via BAN). … Continue reading
Justin here. I’ve got a new post up at the Take Care blog, on a filing last week from DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. It’s a reversal of position, signed by a political appointee rather than career staff, of a request … Continue reading
Bob Egelko reports for the SF Chronicle. … Continue reading
You can read the 15-page opinion and order here. … Continue reading
You can watch this great conversation here. Voting Rights and Wrongs: Hammer Museum, Jan. 31, 2019 … Continue reading
Release. … Continue reading
HuffPost reports. … Continue reading
You can watch the video at this link. The video is based on this paper in the University of Memphis Law Review, part of this symposium on Dr. King’s legacy. … Continue reading
Release: Campaign Legal Center’s (CLC) new Race in Politics Catalog is a collection of political communications, campaign materials and comments that make racial appeals to voters. Compiled over the 2017-2018 election cycle, the Catalog gathers – in one place for the first … Continue reading
David Gans in WaPo: Today, the Voting Rights Act that King helped to push through Congress is in tatters. To stop voting discrimination, the Voting Rights Act created strong remedies applicable to jurisdictions with a long history of flouting constitutional … Continue reading
Scathing Response: Contrary to the assertion in the United States motion for leave, the Court made no distinction between “private Plaintiffs” and the United States. [Dkt. 1609 at 2]. The United States mischaracterizes the Court’s order when it claims that … Continue reading
As first flagged by Gerry Hebert, the Department of Justice has submitted this filing in the long-running Texas redistricting case of Abbott v. Perez indicating it no longer believes (as the Obama Administration did) that Texas should be put back under … Continue reading
USA Today: Rep. Marcia Fudge is quick to acknowledge you only have to look to her home state of Ohio to talk about voting rights concerns . So, in the Democrat’s new role as chairwoman of a revived House subcommittee on … Continue reading
NPR: NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks with Professor Richard Hasen of the University of California, Irvine, about the lawsuit that allies of Stacey Abrams filed accusing Georgia of disenfranchising voters. … Continue reading
David Lublin for The Monkey Cage. … Continue reading
Mississippi Today reports. … Continue reading
VICE reports. … Continue reading
Travis Crum at Take Care: If you’re a voting rights advocate or a law review editor, you might have noticed something different on Westlaw. After the Supreme Court invalidated the Voting Rights Act’s coverage formula in Shelby County v. Holder, Westlaw … Continue reading
CPI: Between 2008 and 2016, Sioux County averaged a voter turnout rate of 39.5 percent, the lowest among North Dakota’s 53 counties, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from the North Dakota secretary of state’s office. … Continue reading
Release via email: Today, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and its partners filed a major lawsuit against Secretary of State Brian Kemp over the state of Georgia’s discriminatory and unlawful “exact match” voter suppression scheme. The suit alleges … Continue reading
Read the order. Along the way, the court finds that the plaintiff challenging the constitutionality of the CVRA is unlikely to succeed on the merits, It also finds it is too close to the election to make a change now … Continue reading
ACLU press release. … Continue reading