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
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