AUSTIN, TX – Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) reached a final settlement agreement with the state of Texas on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and Julie Hilberg, ending Secretary of State David Whitley’s flawed voter purge program, which targeted naturalized citizens and threatened the voting rights of tens of thousands of Texans. The Secretary of State has agreed to abandon his election advisory that led to false allegations – echoed by Attorney General Ken Paxton, Governor Greg Abbott, and others – of widespread noncitizen voter fraud. The list generated by Secretary Whitley was largely comprised of Texans like Julie Hilberg, a naturalized citizen that registered to vote after becoming a citizen in 2015.

“Naturalized American citizens in Texas should not have to worry about their state threatening to purge them from the voting rolls,” said Paul Smith, vice president of litigation and strategy at CLC. “Today’s legally binding agreement means Texas can no longer target naturalized U.S. citizens for potential criminal investigation and removal from the voting lists based on stale data.”

“This is a great day for Texas voters,” said Julie Hilberg, plaintiff in Texas LULAC v. Whitley from Poteet, Texas. “This settlement means we can now feel reassured that we will not be subject to discrimination as a result of voter roll purges. I’d like to thank everyone who worked so tirelessly to make this happen.”

The settlement agreement outlines a list of procedures that Secretary Whitley must follow before his office initiates any program to cancel the voter registration of any individual based on citizenship data provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). As part of the agreement, the state will no longer be permitted to use stale DPS data to question the citizenship of new Americans. Instead, it may only rely upon DPS data that identifies individuals who registered to vote and then only later presented evidence of non-U.S. citizenship to DPS. 

Despite today’s victory, there is a bill moving through the state legislature that threatens to undermine the agreement reached today. SB 903 opens the door for Whitley to reinstate his flawed purge program under the auspices of complying with state law. As this lawsuit demonstrates, however, any retrenchment from the procedures outlined in today’s agreement are likely to have the same constitutional deficiencies as the original flawed program, and would only open Texas up to further liability.

Coordinated spending involves NRA’s support for seven federal candidates, including up to $25 million in illegal contributions to the Trump campaign in 2016

WASHINGTON – Today, Campaign Legal Center Action (CLC Action) filed suit on behalf of Giffords against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for failing to announce any action against the National Rifle Association (NRA) for using shell corporations to coordinate campaign spending with seven federal candidates spanning three election cycles from 2014-2018. The lawsuit was filed two days before President Trump addresses the NRA’s annual convention for the third year in a row – the only time in American history a president has done so.

The NRA’s complicated scheme had the effect of evading campaign contribution limits and shielding millions of dollars of political spending – including up to $25 million coordinated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign – from public scrutiny. The Trace first reported on the NRA's scheme.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Giffords filed four complaints with the FEC to address these violations. The FEC is the independent regulatory agency tasked with enforcing campaign finance laws in federal elections, the agency routinely deadlocks and fails to reach the required four votes necessary to open an investigation. Today, Giffords is asserting its right of action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the 120-day period expired in which the FEC was legally required to respond.

“Our elections are awash in secret cash, and the federal agency charged with enforcing our nation’s election laws is asleep on the job,” said Trevor Potter, president of CLC, and a former Republican Chairman of the FEC. “Campaign finance laws are supposed to limit the influence of money in our politics. For our system to function properly, the FEC needs to enforce the laws that preserve the independence of campaigns and limit the influence of well-funded special interests.”

“When the FEC doesn’t do its job, groups like the NRA are able to get around the rules designed to limit the influence of money on our democracy,” said Brendan Fischer, director, federal reform at CLC. “The FEC’s failure to enforce the law sends a message to wealthy special interests that they can push the legal envelope and get away with it.”

“The FEC is supposed to be the nation’s election watchdog, but in this case it didn’t bite, bark, or even whimper,” said Adam Skaggs, Chief Counsel, Giffords Law Center. “Instead, it turned a blind eye while the NRA’s leadership made clear it’s more interested in handing bags of cash to candidates who will carry its water than following American laws or looking out for the interests of gun owners. In a desperate attempt to hold onto power and influence, NRA executives have flagrantly ignored our campaign finance laws and undermined the integrity of our election system. The FEC must bring illegal campaign conduct into the light of day and we are proud to join with CLC in calling on it to uphold the laws that protect the legitimacy of our democracy.”   

Watch our video, which explains the underlying story behind the NRA's scheme.

Campaign finance law allows outside groups like the NRA to make unlimited expenditures supporting candidates only if the expenditures are completely independent of those candidates. To protect this independence, the FEC has rules prohibiting coordination between outside groups and campaigns, which include restrictions on how a vendor may work for both a candidate and an outside group supporting that candidate. Otherwise, the common vendor can act as a conduit to funnel strategic information to the outside group, and then that group’s expenditures are no longer independent.

The lawsuit implicates the NRA’s spending in support of the following seven candidates:

1. Matt Rosendale (2018 campaign for U.S. Senate in Montana)
2. Josh Hawley (2018 campaign for U.S. Senate in Missouri)
3. Donald Trump (2016 campaign for President of the United States)
4. Ron Johnson (2016 campaign for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin)
5. Thom Tillis (2014 campaign for U.S. Senate in North Carolina)
6. Cory Gardner (2014 campaign for U.S. Senate in Colorado)
7. Tom Cotton (2014 campaign for U.S. Senate in Arkansas)

New House plan would gut constitutional requirements for fairness, transparency and independence in redistricting

JEFFERSON CITY, MO – National experts on nonpartisan redistricting policy joined Missouri citizens in condemning the gerrymandering proposal moving in the Missouri House that would roll back redistricting reforms passed overwhelmingly by voters in 2018.

“Missouri politicians should listen to their voters, who supported fair maps by an almost 2-to-1 margin in November,” said Chris Lamar, legal counsel, redistricting, at Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “This stealth gerrymandering plan proposed by self-interested politicians would overturn the will of the people, making it harder to achieve the independent redistricting process voters sought when they passed Amendment 1.”

"HJR 48 is a big step backwards from the fair map reforms overwhelmingly passed by Missouri voters last November," said Michael Li,  Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. "In place of the strong community-focused rules approved by voters, it would require splitting apart towns and cities and make partisan fairness subordinate to artificial and abstract notions of compactness. This is the exact opposite of good reform."

New language for House Joint Resolution 48 was introduced and passed last week in committee without a thorough vetting or review. It would:

• Overturn the will of 1.4 million Missourians who supported the Clean Missouri Amendment,

• Allow lobbyists and partisan political appointees to gerrymander maps to advance their own interests,

• Allow communities to be split up by political appointees in the name of 'compact' districts,

• Eliminate the requirement that data used for map drafting be made open to the public, and

• Remove the nonpartisan independence added to the state's map-drawing process.

In November 2018, Missourians overwhelmingly supported a new, fair redistricting process that took away the influence of lobbyists and insiders when crafting new legislative maps. In its place, 1,469,093 voters enacted a new system with checks and balances to create districts where candidates will have to work hard to earn their votes, where lobbyists and political insiders can no longer rig the system, and to ensure that no political party gets an unfair advantage in any new maps.

Amendment 1 endorsements in 2018 included:

• Campaign Legal Center

• Organization for Black Struggle

• Missouri Jobs With Justice

• A. Philip Randolph Institute – St. Louis Chapter

• Coalition of Black Trade Unionists

• Common Cause

• Communities Creating Opportunity

• DEMOS

• Metropolitan Congregations United

• Missouri AFL-CIO

• Missouri Faith Voices

• Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys

• MORE2

• NAACP Missouri State Conference

• Service Employees International Union

• The League of Women Voters

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Amendment 1 was also endorsed by Rev. Starsky Wilson, Rev. Dr. Rodney E. Williams, Rev. Dr. Cassandra Gould, Pastor Michael Brooks, Rev. Tex Sample, St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones, the St. Louis American, Kansas City Call, Kansas City Star, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Washington Missourian, and Columbia Daily Tribune.