oday, one day after celebrating the 60th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama — an act that ignited the Civil Rights Movement — lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), and Covington & Burling, LLP, along with Alabama attorney Ed Still have filed a federal lawsuitchallenging Alabama’s photo voter ID law. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of Greater Birmingham Ministries and the Alabama NAACP.
The complaint alleges that Alabama enacted a photo ID law that the State’s own initial analysis showed would disfranchise over a quarter of a million registered voters, a disproportionate number of whom are Black and Latino, in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.