Private Plaintiffs’ response. DOJ’s response. Chief Justice Roberts can now decide this motion himself or refer to the Court. (NC might try to draft a reply by tomorrow). I’d expect a decision early next week. Here’s what I said about … Continue reading
The Hill: A staffer at the Department of Justice is in hot water after sending a tweet about Melania Trump from the agency’s Twitter account. In a statement Tuesday, a Justice official said a “staffer in the public affairs office … Continue reading
Carrie Johnson of NPR talks to Justin Levitt and others about voting issues at DOJ. … Continue reading
Nice Sari Horwitz profile of Justin Levitt in the Washington Post. (Justin has been an ELB blogger but not while he’s at DOJ.) Levitt would not discuss specific cases, except to say that although the department is hampered by the Supreme Court’s … Continue reading
Conversation with Ari Berman. The case that struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act was called Shelby County v. Holder. You are Holder. Do you think the Administration in retrospect could have done anything differently in arguing that … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy blogs. … Continue reading
Imprimis: The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is the one we think of as having the main responsibility for protecting fairness. Yet its recent record has indicated other priorities. Recently its Voting Section went out of its way to review a … Continue reading
Release: Loyola Law School, Los Angeles today announced that prominent election law professor Justin Levitt, a national expert in constitutional law and the law of democracy, has been named Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the … Continue reading
My friend, co-blogger,and colleague Justin Levitt will be taking a leave from Loyola (and this blog) to take a position as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, with a focus on voting rights … Continue reading
Guy-Urïel Charles and Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, have a new piece in the Iowa Law Review. I offered a commentary, here. Just to give you a flavor for the piece is, here’s a brief excerpt from my introduction, which offers a rough summary … Continue reading
DocDawg at Daily Kos. … Continue reading
Bloomberg BNA: The Justice Department is asking for a jail sentence of nearly four years for Tyler Harber, a Virginia political consultant who pleaded guilty to illegal coordination of campaign financing by a super political action committee and a congressional … Continue reading
Woof. More from WaPo. … Continue reading
LAT: Federal authorities are investigating allegations that California and its courts are unlawfully denying voting rights to some intellectually disabled residents, according to documents released Wednesday. Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice in Sacramento have requested records from Secretary … Continue reading
Carrie Johnson for NPR: “Veteran prosecutor Raymond Hulser has been promoted to lead the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, the unit that goes after corrupt public officials including lawmakers, judges and military contractors.” … Continue reading
Politico reports. … Continue reading
Linda Greenhouse joins the chorus of people calling for the Supreme Court to agree to hear Frank v. Walker, the Wisconsin voter id case, up for a Supreme Court conference vote on Friday. (I think it is very unlikely we will … Continue reading
Roll Call reports. … Continue reading
DOJ press release: A campaign finance manager and political consultant pleaded guilty today in the Eastern District of Virginia for coordinating $325,000 in federal election campaign contributions by a political action committee (PAC) to a Congressional campaign committee. This is … Continue reading
Mike Sacks reports for BLT. … Continue reading
Should be interesting. … Continue reading
TPR reports. … Continue reading
Mike Sacks for BLT. … Continue reading
I have written this new piece for Slate. It begins: As Democrats struggled last week to salvage control of the Senate, they pushed to get as many black voters to the polls as possible, especially in the South. It’s no wonder: … Continue reading
Chris Geidner reports for BuzzFeed. … Continue reading
Tim Eaton for the Austin-American Statesman: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott won the most recent round in the fight to require voters to show valid photo identification to cast ballots, but a potentially much bigger fight looms beyond Tuesday. Abbott’s … Continue reading
Roseann Romano, adding to a growing list of important student notes on bail-in, for the Iowa Law Review: In response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which dismantled the modern voting rights enforcement regime by declaring … Continue reading
A part of this fascinating New Yorker piece: The subject of voting rights has largely been thrust upon Obama by a conservative judiciary. “You look at something like the Voting Rights Act, which was uncontroversial from a legal point of … Continue reading
Of course, this was from this morning. … Continue reading
Michael Solimine has written this Essay for the Georgetown Law Journal. Here is the beginning: In Shelby County v. Holder the Supreme Court held that the preclearance provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) was unconstitutional as presently constituted. Section 5 of the … Continue reading
A snippet: As you’re discussing, through the unrelenting efforts of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division – under the leadership of Acting Assistant Attorney General Molly Moran, from whom you’ll be hearing this afternoon – my colleagues and I are … Continue reading
WaPo: Attorney General Eric Holder’s communications director is being accused of calling the House Oversight Committee Republican staff and asking for help spinning a story. The twist? The GOP staff alleges that Holder’s spokesman thought he was talking to the … Continue reading
Bloomberg reports. … Continue reading
The Texas Tribune reports. … Continue reading
In an earlier post, I noted this filing of the state of Texas in the voter id case (particularly pages 13-23), raising an affirmative defense to DOJ’s claims that Texas’s voter id law violates section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and … Continue reading
A reader alerted me to this filing of the state of Texas in the voter id case (particularly pages 13-23), raising an affirmative defense to DOJ’s claims that Texas’s voter id law violates section 2 of the Voting Rights Act … Continue reading
Ari Berman writes for The Nation. … Continue reading
Reuters reports. … Continue reading
Richard Fausset reports for the NYT. My earlier analysis is here. … Continue reading
Zachary Roth reports for MSNBC. … Continue reading
Tampa Bay Times: “U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sent a scathing letter to Gov. Rick Scott over voting changes in Florida and issued a warning that the Justice Department is “carefully monitoring” the state.” … Continue reading
HuffPo: The staff of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division gathered this morning in their fifth floor conference room — J. Edgar Hoover’s former office — for an “all hands” meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced that his current … Continue reading
WSJ reports. … Continue reading
Ana Marie Cox Guardian column. … Continue reading
MSNBC: “It’s not clear from Holder’s comments whether the Justice Department intends simply to file amicus briefs in support of the laws’ challengers, or whether it plans to intervene as a new plaintiff—and assign government lawyers to the cases—as it did … Continue reading
Kind of a surprise buried in this ABC News report: In addition, Holder took Republicans to task for efforts to, among other things, enact voter ID laws in some states. He called such moves “political efforts” aimed at making it … Continue reading
DOJ press release. … Continue reading
This one in Ohio. … Continue reading
Legal Times reports. … Continue reading
Legal Times reports. … Continue reading
