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
Here. … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
From DOJ’s budget submission to Congress (p. 44): Because of the Shelby County case, the Voting Section’s work will necessarily shift to greater affirmative efforts to detect and investigate voting practices that violate federal law, to more affirmative litigation to … Continue reading
Here. … Continue reading
HuffPo: During a Thursday sitdown with reporters, Reid said that Adegbile, a respected civil rights lawyer who previously led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, met privately with Reid and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) for nearly … Continue reading
Updated NYT account: But it was the votes of seven Democratic senators to reject Mr. Adegbile that doomed the nomination despite what White House officials described as a sustained closed-door effort by Mr. Obama and his top aides to save … Continue reading
HuffPo reports. I have no doubt about that. … Continue reading
Here. … Continue reading
Think Progress. … Continue reading
Must-read. The only thing I think missing from this is the relevance of Mr. Adegbile’s race in all of this—that may be just as significant as the “cop-killing” meme. ANOTHER GREAT READ from Jesse Wegman. … Continue reading
Here. … Continue reading
The Adegbile defeat to be DOJ civil rights head shows you how scared Ds are of losing the Senate. And how powerful the Abu-Jamal cop-killer narrative might be against them. … Continue reading
WaPo: Once considered the world’s best-known death row inmate, Abu-Jamal has written books from his prison cell, had his cause championed by prominent civil rights advocates including Cornel West and Desmond Tutu, and had a street in Paris named in … Continue reading
On February 17 I noted that the DOJ page on Section 5 gave no indication that Shelby County had been decided and that section 5 was no longer being enforced against previously covered jurisdictions. The page has now been updated, … Continue reading
NLJ on Debo Adegbile. … Continue reading
Ryan Reilly: “Omnibus requires #DOJ IG to spend $1 million on independent review of Civil Rights Division. http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20140113/CPRT-113-HPRT-RU00-h3547-hamdt2samdt_xml.pdf …“ … Continue reading
Carrie Johnson on the Debo Adegbile nomination. … Continue reading
One grant of atty’s fees; one denying interim attorney’s fees; and one concerning legislative.privilege in the ongoing litigation. … Continue reading
BLT reports on Debo Adegbile confirmation hearing today in the Senate. … Continue reading
Notice. … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
Huge news from Jeffrey Toobin: “Confirmed by DOJ: Noted voting rights expert and Stanford prof Pamela Karlan to join Obama admin as Dep Asst AG for voting rights. #scotus” MORE from Josh Gerstein. … Continue reading
From the OIG: The non-ideological, non-partisan enforcement of law is fundamental to the public’s trust in the Department. Yet in a recent report assessing how the enforcement priorities of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division have changed over … Continue reading
Ari Berman: A federal judge in Winston-Salem today set the schedule for a trial challenging North Carolina’s sweeping new voter restrictions. There will be a hearing on whether to grant a preliminary injunction in July 2014 and a full trial … Continue reading
Former DOJ voting section lawyers Robert Popper and Chris Coates are leading a team trying to intervene against DOJ in the North Carolina Voting Rights Act lawsuit. … Continue reading
News & Observer: Parties who are a gulf apart over what laws should be in place to ensure fair and open elections are just as widely divided about how quickly a lawsuit challenging new voter laws should be heard in … Continue reading
Texas Redistricting sums it up. (motion) … Continue reading
BLT: “This whole notion of voter fraud and the need to come up with photo ID to combat voter fraud is really a solution that’s in search of a problem,” Holder said today. Holder said there’s “no empirical evidence that … Continue reading
Bill Boyarsky explains. … Continue reading
WSJ editorial. … Continue reading
Abby Rapoport writes for TAP. … Continue reading
The National Law Journal reports. … Continue reading
I’m wondering why the DOJ did not raise a constitutional claim in its complaint against both early voting and the wrong precinct provisional balloting issue. There were two important 6th circuit cases just before the 2012 elections coming out of … Continue reading
ColorLines reports. … Continue reading
AP reports. … Continue reading
NYT editorial. … Continue reading
Charlotte Observer ABC News WaPo TPM NPR Buzzfeed MSNBC … Continue reading
Here. … Continue reading
Here. … Continue reading
NYT: The Justice Department is expected to sue North Carolina on Monday over its restrictive new voting law, further escalating the Obama administration’s efforts to restore a stronger federal role in protecting minority voters after the Supreme Court struck down … Continue reading