In August 2016, the Obama administration announced that it would be phasing out federal private prison contracts like those held by GEO. The announcement sent GEO’s stocks tumbling. The next day, GEO contributed $100,000 to the pro-Trump super PAC Rebuilding America Now, and it made another $125,000 contribution just one week before the election. At the time, Mike Pence was telling donors that giving to the super PAC was “one of the best ways to stop Hillary Clinton and help elect Donald Trump our next president!” After Trump won, GEO gave $250,000 to the Trump Inaugural Committee.

GEO did not have to wait long to see its investment start to pay off. On Feb. 23, 2017, during his second full week on the job, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a one-paragraph memo reversing the Obama administration’s private prison phase-out, instead ordering officials to continue using for-profit facilities for federal inmates.

In April 2017, the Trump Administration awarded GEO a $110 million, 10-year federal contract to build and administer a new 1,000-bed immigration detention center in Texas. GEO expects $44 million a year in revenue from the facility. GEO also has enjoyed a soaring stock price; its stock shot up 21 percent the day after Trump won, and has continued to grow since then.

CLC filed an FEC complaint, which alleges that the contributions — made through a wholly-owned subsidiary, GEO Corrections Holdings, Inc. — violated the ban on federal contractors giving money in federal elections. This law has been in place for 75 years to protect the integrity of the contracting process.

CLC filed this case against the FEC on January 10, 2018 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after waiting more than a year for the FEC to resolve this complaint. CLC hopes the lawsuit will compel the FEC to act. 

There is recent precedent for the FEC taking action against government contractors for giving to super PACs. In September 2017, the FEC responded to a CLC complaint and found that the Massachusetts-based Suffolk Construction Company violated campaign finance law by making two $100,000 donations to a Hillary Clinton-affiliated super PAC in 2015. That company agreed to pay a $34,000 fine.

The reason that federal contractors have been barred from making contributions for the past 75 years is to prevent pay-to-play in the contracting process. Public officials are supposed to make contracting decisions based on what is best for the public, not based on who spent the most money getting them elected. GEO Group’s illegal donations have the appearance of a pay-to-play: since Trump was elected with GEO’s backing, the company has reaped enormous political and financial benefits, including a new $110 million taxpayer-funded contract.

The FEC is critical to the enforcement of the contractor contribution ban and in preventing pay-to-play politics. It is incumbent upon the FEC to enforce the longstanding federal contribution ban and take action against GEO Group to deter future violations. Without the contractor ban, the government contracting process becomes an obvious way for officials to reward friends and political donors.

In a separate but related case, CLC filed a lawsuit on June 15, 2017 seeking to compel the Department of Justice (DOJ) to disclose requested records that would gather information about how DOJ reached its conclusion to rescind official policy to phase-out the use of private prisons in the administration’s contracting process. Almost nine months later, the public still has not seen any documents that show how DOJ reached its decision to change course on its private prison policy.

Doe v. FEC is a case about a mystery donor's attempt to maintain secrecy around a $1.7 million donation to a super PAC whose spending was meant to influence the 2012 election. The nonprofit group Citizens for Reponsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) brought the original complaint against the super PAC, called Now or Never PAC, in February 2015 alleging that an unknown person made a contribution to Now or Never, violating the prohibition on contributions made in the name of another person.

CLC filed a motion to intervene in support of CREW's quest for transparency on January 3, 2018.

On March 23, 2018, the U.S. District Court issued an opinion that upheld the right of the Federal Election Commission to uphold its own disclosure policy and give the public the right to know the names of donors.

Importance of Case

Disclosure is critical because voters deserve to know the names of donors that are spending millions of dollars to influence their vote. Transparency is the foundation of an open democracy. Under the Federal Election Campaign Act, the FEC must be permitted to keep extensive recordkeeping and disclosure requirements of campaign contributions in order to remedy pay-to-play politics.

Independent agencies provide important services to the American people, including making sure our elections are safe, secure and accurate. Congress and past presidents have agreed that insulation from the president is sometimes necessary to ensure that agencies prioritize their mission, rather than catering to the political whims of the president.  

Independent agencies are designed by Congress to operate outside of the president’s direct control, which is typically achieved through tenure protections for agency leaders so that the president cannot fire them merely for a policy disagreement.  

In March 2025, President Trump fired both Democratic commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), an independent agency. This firing was just one part of the Administration’s effort to dismantle the independence of agencies that Congress carefully designed. For example, President Trump: 

• Issued an executive order that would grant the President broad powers to oversee the regulations and proceedings of independent agencies;
• Issued an executive order that unlawfully attempts to direct the EAC to make changes to voter registration requirements for federal elections;
• Illegally fired agency heads of other independent agencies, just because they are not political loyalists. For example, President Trump removed Ellen Weintraub from her position as Chair of the FEC. 

Independent agencies are meant to function autonomously to carry out federal laws and serve the American people, not the president’s political interests. But President Trump’s actions threaten this important and long-standing framework.

The commissioners at the FTC sued the president because their firing violated the tenure protection that Congress had provided. The U.S. Supreme Court is now deciding whether the president’s firing of the commissioners was lawful. Campaign Legal Center (CLC), alongside Trevor Potter, CLC’s president and former Republican chair of the FEC, filed an amicus brief explaining the importance of independence for federal election agencies. Drawing on Potter’s experience at the FEC and CLC’s long history of practicing before the FEC and EAC, CLC’s brief demonstrates that independence is especially critical when the president’s past campaigns and future election activities are subject to the FEC and EAC’s oversight.

The FEC is the only agency that regulates money in federal elections, including elections for president. Although commissioners are appointed by the president, Congress purposefully did not give the president the power to fire FEC commissioners to protect the FEC’s authority to regulate the executive branch on campaign finance matters. In fact, the FEC was created in response to Watergate, in part because of the problem of presidential interference in the enforcement of campaign finance laws.

The EAC is the agency responsible for maintaining the federal voter registration form and helping states guarantee that elections are safe, secure and accessible. Like the FEC, the EAC was designed by Congress to be independent so that no president could put a thumb on the scale to favor their own campaign or political party.

In our brief, CLC and Potter argue that agency independence advances democratic values, such as the consideration of opposing views and enhanced transparency. CLC and Potter also warn about the experience of authoritarianism abroad, where leaders have used control over election agencies to consolidate and entrench their own power.  

Congress designed both the FEC and EAC to be bipartisan, expert, and impartial. Allowing the president to fire anyone at these agencies that he disagrees with would undermine our nation’s system of checks and balances and threaten the integrity of our elections.

Campaign Legal Center and Trevor Potter urge the Supreme Court to rule that the president cannot fire independent agency leaders, including leaders at the FEC and EAC, just because they are not political loyalists. This ruling will have massive implications for the control that the president can exert over more than two dozen independent agencies. 
 

Historically, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has maintained a database on immigrants that tracks their immigration status and citizenship status called “SAVE.” The original purpose of the SAVE database was to provide government agencies with a resource to check whether individuals were eligible for government benefits based on their immigration or citizenship status.  

In recent years, a handful of states have used SAVE as part of their voter registration system. SAVE can be used to attempt to confirm the citizenship status of an individual either at the time they apply to register or after they have been added to the state’s voter registration list.  

Because the SAVE system only contained information regarding immigrants, it could not be used to confirm the citizenship status of U.S.-born citizens.  

The information SAVE has about individuals is often outdated, meaning that people could be categorized as noncitizens in SAVE even long after they have become a naturalized citizen and eligible to vote.  

Now, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — which oversees USCIS — has entered into an agreement with the Social Security Administration (SSA) to incorporate SSA’s data into the SAVE system, data that includes U.S.-born citizens. As a result, many government agencies will be able to access this combined database of all Americans.  

This newly incorporated SSA data is notoriously unreliable. SSA is not entrusted with making citizenship determinations or formally tracking citizenship status. Incorporating unreliable citizenship data could result in citizens erroneously having their voter registration application denied or erroneously being purged from voter registration lists.    

On September 30, 2025, a group of plaintiffs led by the League of Women Voters filed suit in federal court challenging the legality of DHS’s data consolidation efforts. The suit claims that DHS’s centralization of data on Americans violates the Privacy Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the separation of powers required by the Constitution.

Campaign Legal Center submitted an amicus brief highlighting the separation-of-powers concerns implicated by DHS’s intervention in verifying voter eligibility.

Only Congress and the states have the power to set rules about our elections, not the president. This attempt to consolidate private and sensitive data by DHS is part of a larger effort to shift election administration functions into the executive branch.

Voter purges, or efforts to remove a significant number of voters from the registration rolls all at once, ultimately threaten Americans’ freedom to vote and tend to disproportionately target people with past felony convictions, voters of color, low-income voters and young voters.