Almost exactly five years ago I wrote a NY Times oped about the Supreme Court’s unfortunate decision striking down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County: The Chief Justice’s Long Game. This part held up pretty well: Today’s … Continue reading
Category Archives: Voting Rights Act
Thwarted before, N.C. GOP wants photo ID mandate: North Carolina legislative Republicans on Thursday advanced their goal of permanently requiring voters to show photo identification — a proposal previously thwarted this decade by veto and federal judges who declared a … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
I had thought that the partisan gerrymandering cases were going to end with a whimper rather than a bang, and that’s exactly what happened. With thoughts that Justice Thomas or Alito likely have the opinion in the Texas redistricting cases … Continue reading
NYT: The Democratic National Committee is undertaking an expansive, multimillion dollar strategic plan to motivate voters who typically sit out midterm elections, with a particular focus on engaging nonwhite communities through new investments in local organizing and a six-figure advertising … Continue reading
The Supreme Court issued four opinions today, and signalled a rare Friday opinion release tomorrow with 10 cases remaining. The Court is likely to finish its term and release of the remaining opinions some time next week. Only three Justices … Continue reading
Kira Lerner for Think Progress: But with more voters casting ballots from their homes, Arizona is offering fewer opportunities for people to cast ballots in person. That’s a problem for Native Americans, who say they enjoy the communal aspects of voting on … Continue reading
With no fanfare, the mandate issued from the 5th Circuit in the Texas voter ID case yesterday, ending the appeal. As I wrote back in April, the panel issued a “fundamentally disingenuous opinion” by Judge Edith Jones, which was really … Continue reading
Press release via email: A lawsuit filed in federal court alleges that the at-large voting system of the Town of Islip violates the Voting Rights Act by systematically preventing members of Islip’s Latino community from electing candidates of their choice … Continue reading
The Court’s order denying cert. in Igartua v. Trump is here. Background at Harvard Law Review. … Continue reading
The district court had tossed the case on standing, but the Ninth Circuit has revived the case. It has given LULAC permission to intervene in the case. Buckle up! … Continue reading
Today we sued Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana for violating Sec. 2 of the Voting Rights Act in how they drew congressional district lines to disadvantage minority voters. Here are copies of the lawsuits: https://t.co/U8t3KjZfJK, https://t.co/xbHhOBEV9R, https://t.co/0MF0SGG0FF — Marc E. Elias … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a controversial Ohio voter purge law which allows the state to begin the process of removing voters from the rolls based upon their failure to vote in … Continue reading
This looks good: When: Thursday, July 12, 2018 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Where: Room to be announced Steptoe & Johnson LLP 1330 Connecticut Ave NW Washington, D.C. 20036 And via webinar Registration: This event is free and open to the … Continue reading
NBC Bay Area: A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge announced Tuesday that he believes Santa Clara’s at-large voting system violates the California Voting Rights Act and has impaired the Asian-American population from getting elected. Santa Clara registered voters Ladonna … Continue reading
Cronkite News reports (h/t Doug Chapin). … Continue reading
You can find the 83-page opinion at this link. Near the end of the opinion, the court rejects treating race as party proxy argument: Based on the totality of the circumstances, Plaintiffs have not shown that the legislature enacted H.B. … Continue reading
Details: Judicial Gerrymandering? The Voting Rights Act, Judicial Elections, and Redistricting May 2, 2018 01:00 PM – 02:00 PM Event Location: ACS Webinar , Details: In recent weeks, the North Carolina General Assembly has proposed redrawing the map … Continue reading
Howard has it. And see my earlier post on the case, which begins: In what I consider to be a fundamentally disingenuous analysis by 5th Circuit Judge Edith Jones, a divided 5th Circuit panel has not only held that Texas’s … Continue reading
BuzzFeed: The part of the manual addressing the Justice Department’s civil rights work was revised in March. In a section discussing enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, the new version removes previous references to redistricting and racial gerrymandering. The previous version stated: “The Voting Section … Continue reading
Manny Fernandez reports for the NY Times. … Continue reading
Earlier today, Rick noted the 5th Circuit’s opinion on Texas’s voter ID law. I agree with much of his critique of the court’s resolution of the section 3(c) preclearance issue. In my post on the Texas redistricting cases earlier this … Continue reading
You can find a majority opinion by Judge Jones, concurring opinion by Judge Higginbotham, and dissenting opinion by Judge Graves in Veasey v. Abbott at this link. In what I consider to be a fundamentally disingenuous analysis by 5th Circuit … Continue reading
It was somewhat of a surprise in September 2017 when the Supreme Court on a 5-4 vote blocked a three judge-court hearing an interminable Texas redistricting case from imposing final maps. The surprise came because the Court had not yet … Continue reading
Order: Filed order (RICHARD C. TALLMAN and MARY H. MURGUIA) Appellant Higginsons emergency motion for injunction pending appeal in 18-55455 (Docket Entry No. ) is denied. Appellants opposed request to expedite appeal No. 18-55455 is granted in part. The opening … Continue reading
Alexa Ura with the lede of the day (though this curtain raiser is a few weeks old): Everyone in the Texas redistricting fight is pissed off. … Continue reading
[bumping to the top given the upcoming Tuesday argument in the Texas redistricting cases] I have written this piece for TPM Cafe. It begins: In a Supreme Court term already bursting with election cases, from two partisan gerrymandering disputes to a fight about the permissibility of … Continue reading
Amy Howe preview for SCOTUSBlog. … Continue reading
Chuck Lindell for the Austin-American Statesman. … Continue reading
The Dallas News reports. … Continue reading
Salt Lake Tribune: “I feel like we’ve been disenfranchised,” said Robert Turk, 57. It was the shared sentiment Thursday at the first GOP convention in San Juan County since a federal judge redrew the boundaries to give Navajos, who tend to affiliate … Continue reading
AL.com: The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is challenging the election process in a suburb of Birmingham, claiming it has kept blacks from being elected to local office and violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In a recent letter to the … Continue reading
Gromer Jeffers for the Dallas Morning News. … Continue reading
Read the district court’s latest order in Higginson v. Becerra. This is a serious challenge. The challenger’s lawyer is William Consovoy, the lawyer who argued the Evenwel v. Abbott case on one person, one vote at the Supreme Court and one … Continue reading
Mike Pitts has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, UC Irvine Law Review). Here is the abstract: In 1993, Shaw v. Reno created a doctrine of racial gerrymandering that has now been in existence for 25 years. This Article examines the … Continue reading
Alternative link. … Continue reading
This University of Memphis/MLK 50 event should be outstanding, and especially the voting rights panel. I’m honored to be included. I’ll be talking about this draft “Of Civil Right No. 1: Dr. King’s Unfinished Voting Rights Revolution,” which is forthcoming in a … Continue reading
WaPo: The NAACP said it is planning to file a lawsuit against the Census Bureau, the secretary of commerce and President Trump to force a more accurate count of minority populations such as those residing in Prince George’s County, Md., … Continue reading
Austin American-Statesman: President Donald Trump’s top appellate lawyer has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow him to argue in defense of Texas political maps that were found to be discriminatory by a lower court. Solicitor General Noel Francisco asked to split … Continue reading
Politico: The 2020 U.S. Census will include a controversial question about citizenship status, the Commerce Department announced Monday night, a move that is set to spark outrage from Congressional Democrats, civil rights groups and liberal state attorneys general. Critics have … Continue reading
David Cottrell, Michael C. Herron, Javier M. Rodriguez, and Daniel A. Smith have written this article for American Politics Research. Here is the abstract: On account of poor living conditions, African Americans in the United States experience disproportionately high rates of … Continue reading
Release: A federal court in Albany agreed with the ACLU Voting Rights Project, the Law Office of Bryan L. Sells, and the ACLU of Georgia, that the Sumter County Board of Elections and Registration’s current school board district lines are unfair … Continue reading
Kira Lerner: Georgia Republicans are advancing a bill through the state legislature that would suppress African-American turnout by eliminating Sunday voting and cutting the hours that polls are open in Atlanta. The bill, SB 363, would force polls in the majority African American … Continue reading
You can find the district court’s opinion here. There will be further proceedings to address the remedy. For the quantitative folks, there’s an interesting Morgan Kousser-Jonathan Katz methodological dispute over how to measure racially polarized voting. … Continue reading
Calendar via Kimberly Robinson. … Continue reading
Statement. … Continue reading
Read the brief and press release. … Continue reading
This development is unexpected: Micah Sims, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, said his organization and the state NAACP are considering filing suit in federal court to challenge the new map imposed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court this week. He said … Continue reading
Courthouse News Service: “Since 1945, only five of the 76 justices to serve on the Supreme Court, a mere 6.6 percent, were Latino. During the same period, 69 of those 76 justices, or 89.5 percent, were white,” LUPE said in … Continue reading
Can’t wait to read all of these: VOLUME 127 2017-2018 COLLECTION Five Years After Shelby County v. Holder: The Ongoing Fight for Voting Rights 08 FEB 2018 In the five years since Shelby County v. Holder, voting rights litigators have resorted to … Continue reading