Voting Rights Scholars File SCOTUS Amicus Brief Urging Cert. Grant in Territorial Voting Case

Equally American Blog:

A petition to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking expanded voting rights in U.S. territories has received an important boost. Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands Bar Association, and leading voting rights scholars have each filed amicus briefs in support of Supreme Court review in Segovia v. United States. Last month, Luis Segovia, a proud veteran living in Guam, along with other former state residents living in Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, petitioned the Supreme Court to answer whether it is constitutional to deny absentee voting rights in these territories while allowing citizens living in other U.S. territories or even a foreign country to continue being able to vote for President and voting representation in Congress….

Leading voting rights scholars argue in their brief that Supreme Court review is necessary to reverse the Seventh Circuit’s decision to apply a lower level of judicial scrutiny to the regulation of voting rights in U.S. territories than it would apply to similar laws impacting Americans in other parts of the United States.

The brief highlights several ways the Seventh Circuit’s decision conflicts with precedent from other federal courts. “Once a state legislature or Congress extends the right to vote to one group of people,” the brief explains “it cannot deprive another identically situated group of people of the right to cast a vote purely based on geography.

Amici include Samuel Issacharoff, Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law; Joshua Douglas, Robert G. Lawson & William H. Fortune Associate Professor of Law at University of Kentucky College of Law; Chad Flanders, Professor of Law at Saint Louis University School of Law; Joseph Fishkin, Marrs McLean Professor in Law at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law; Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Fried Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School; and Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Leon Highbaugh Sr. Research Chair and Professor of Law, Stetson University.

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