Today, as Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) introduce the Voting Rights Advancement Act (VRAA) on the eve of the second anniversary of Shelby County v. Holder, the Campaign Legal Center is releasing a short film focusing on a lifelong voter disenfranchised by Texas’ voter photo ID law (SB 14).  The most restrictive and burdensome voter ID law in the nation, the Texas law was rejected by the Department of Justice prior to the Shelby County ruling and is a perfect example of why Congress needs to pass new legislation to protect the rights of all citizens to vote. 

The new three and a half minute film produced by Firelight Media traces the efforts of the Campaign Legal Center’s Voter ID Project to assist Tony, a longtime registered Texas voter, to overcome the many hurdles erected by the new law in order to obtain the photo ID required by SB 14 in order to vote.  

“Tony’s deeply troubling story puts a very human face on the impact of a heartless law that disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Texans, and intentionally and disproportionately stripped the right to vote from minority voters,” said J. Gerald Hebert, Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center.  “Rep. Lewis’ and Sen. Leahy’s Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015 will restore the voting rights protections undermined by the Supreme Court two years ago in its wrong-headed Shelby County decision.  The two-year anniversary of that terrible decision is two years too many without sufficient protections for voting rights.  States and municipalities around the country – but particularly in formerly ‘covered’ jurisdictions that were subject to the special provisions of the Voting Rights Act before Shelby County - have taken advantage of the vacuum in voting rights protections created by that decision to adopt a wide range of voting laws designed to make voting more difficult and in many cases impossible for huge numbers of minorities and the poor.  It is long past time for Congress to right the wrong done to our democracy by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder.”

To watch the film, click here.

To watch a previously released longer film, click here.

Today, in Han-Noggle v. City of Albuquerque, the Campaign Legal Center filed a motion to participate as amicus curiae and an accompanying amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit to partially reverse a district court decision awarding fees to the City of Albuquerque in a civil rights lawsuit.  The brief clarifies the legal standards for awarding fees to prevailing civil rights defendants.  The brief further emphasizes that the City of Albuquerque has pursued an abusive policy of liberally seeking fees against civil rights plaintiffs in order to discourage such suits, including, most notably, in Baca v. Berry, where the CLC represents individual citizens who the city has attempted to fine for seeking to vindicate their voting rights.     

“The district court applied the wrong standard in awarding fees to the City of Albuquerque and the City now urges the Tenth Circuit to compound the district court’s error,” said Joshua Bone, the Legal Center attorney who argued before the Tenth Circuit in Baca.  “This is not the first time that the City has sought to intimidate its own citizens in court by seeking to recover attorneys’ fees against civil rights plaintiffs.  We hope that the Tenth Circuit will help bring this abuse of powers to an end by reversing the district court’s partial attorneys’ fees award and refusing the City’s invitation to further punish its own citizens.”   

Currently the Legal Center represents four Albuquerque voters against the City of Albuquerque in Baca v. Berry, a voting rights case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.  Earlier this month the Legal Center filed a motion for sanctions against the city and its attorneys for pursuing a frivolous cross-appeal in bad faith.  This cross-appeal had sought to force the voters to pay the city’s attorneys’ fees after they challenged a controversial city redistricting plan. 

To read the Legal Center’s amicus brief, click here.

To read the Legal Center’s motion for sanctions in Baca, click here.

On Friday, in Wolfson v. Concannon, the Campaign Legal Center joined with other nonprofit groups concerned with the integrity of the courts in filing an amici curiae brief urging the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to overturn a three-judge circuit panel ruling striking down Arizona rules for judicial campaigns. 

The three-judge circuit panel struck down Arizona’s ban on judicial candidates personally soliciting political contributions, as well as its ban on judicial candidates endorsing, speaking in favor of or campaigning for non-judicial candidates—but only as these bans apply to non-judge candidates.  In June 2014, the Legal Center and other groups filed an amici brief urging the full Ninth Circuit to review the ruling.  In September 2014, the court agreed to rehear the case en banc.

“The panel’s decision cannot be reconciled with Supreme Court precedent, which has been very clear in its support of safeguards designed to protect public faith in the judicial branch,” said Megan P. McAllen, Associate Counsel for The Campaign Legal Center.  “In its recent decision upholding Florida rules governing judicial campaign activity, announced less than two months ago, the Supreme Court again emphasized the vital importance of preserving public confidence in judicial independence and impartiality.  Striking down Arizona’s political activities rules would call into question the constitutionality of similar rules in all jurisdictions, or else only in those states that have judicial elections—but as the Supreme Court has found, states are entitled to enact rules that protect judicial integrity no matter how they choose to select their judges, by election or otherwise.”

In the last six years, the U.S. Supreme Court has twice considered cases about judicial campaign activity and come down in favor of similar restrictions.  In Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, the Court upheld a Florida rule prohibiting candidates for judicial office from personally soliciting campaign funds.  In 2009, in Caperton v. Massey, the Supreme Court recognized that spending in judicial campaigns could create an untenable appearance of bias, requiring a judge to recuse himself.

The brief filed by the legal and judicial organizations also emphasized that Arizona’s rules must be understood as part of a larger regulatory and policy framework that, as a whole, ensures an independent, fair and impartial judiciary.

The other amici groups included the Arizona Judges’ Association, Brennan Center for Justice, Justice at Stake, and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.  Richard F. Ziegler and Justin O. Spiegel of Jenner & Block LLP are serving as attorneys for amici curiae.

To read the brief, click here.   

Today, the Campaign Legal Center joined Democracy 21 in calling on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to follow its own precedent and investigate apparent campaign finance violations by Jeb Bush and his associated Super PAC, despite the fact that the former Governor is expected to announce his “candidacy” on June 15.  The letter urges DOJ to investigate whether Bush, and the Right to Rise Super PAC, are engaged in knowing and willful violations of the campaign finance laws, emphasizing that federal law gives DOJ express jurisdiction over “knowing and willful” violations.

Today’s letter reiterates a request made last month to Attorney General Loretta Lynch to exercise her statutory authority to appoint a Special Counsel to conduct the investigation and any prosecutions that the Special Counsel finds warranted.  The groups note in today’s letter that in 1996 then-Attorney General Reno established a Campaign Finance Task Force, headed by a lawyer from the San Diego U.S. Attorney’s office, to investigate allegations of illegal fundraising by both the Clinton and Dole campaigns during the 1996 presidential election.

“This is not a ‘no harm, no foul’ situation as there is a growing list of reports of what appear to be knowing and willful violations of campaign finance laws,” said J. Gerald Hebert, Campaign Legal Center Executive Director.  “Simply declaring his candidacy does not wipe the slate clean of campaign finance violations by Bush and his Super PAC.”

“FEC Commissioners have publicly admitted that they are either unwilling or unable to enforce the laws on the books, so it is up to DOJ to step in and enforce the laws passed by Congress to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption.  The ongoing pattern of apparent ‘knowing and willful’ violations of campaign finance laws by the Bush shadow campaign gives DOJ express jurisdiction under federal law.”

Hebert added: “These are not hyper-technical, minor matters.  These campaign finance violations are a way of avoiding contribution limits aimed at preventing the corruption of our elected officials.  These willful violations by Bush and the Right to Rise Super PAC strike at the very heart of our democracy.”

To read the full letter, click here.

To read the memorandum from the Clinton Justice Department, click here.

To read the earlier letter to the Attorney General, click here.

Over the past few years, efforts to dilute and suppress minority voting rights or to restrict the vote for partisan gain have spiked dramatically.  Racially-discriminatory voting laws have been passed in states and municipalities across the country, particularly in jurisdictions that no longer have to comply with a key provision of the Voting Rights Act as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision two years ago in Shelby County v. Holder.  Jurisdictions have also passed election restrictions designed to benefit one party over the other, often under the guise of improving already-efficient election procedures and preventing non-existent voter-fraud.  The Campaign Legal Center has filed suit to challenge a number of those laws and participated in other cases across the country.

The Legal Center has released an updated summary of that litigation to facilitate the tracking of those cases.  The summary includes a number of the most prominent post-Shelby cases, though more are out there.

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the formula used to determine which states and localities would be covered under the Voting Rights Act’s “preclearance” requirement.  Since then, voting rights cases have continued to multiply, albeit under the more difficult standards of the Act’s remaining provisions—notably, the Court left intact Section 2, which blocks discriminatory voting rules nationwide, as well as Section 3, which allows courts to impose preclearance requirements on (or “bail in”) particular jurisdictions found to have discriminated against voters.  Voting rights plaintiffs are also increasingly bringing constitutional claims, such as claims that certain election rules violate the right to vote protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Despite these higher legal hurdles, the need to protect voting rights is even greater today as the threats to those rights have multiplied.  Voter photo ID laws and racial gerrymanders have produced some of the highest profile cases, but a broad range of tactics also have been applied to drive down voter turnout and eligibility generally.  The number of these new efforts has exploded as the difficulty in challenging them in court has increased.

The Legal Center’s voting rights litigation summary attests to the widespread efforts to undermine the voting rights of minority communities and the vital need to challenge these voter suppression laws in the courts. 

To read the new Legal Center updated Voting Rights litigation summary, click here.

To read the Legal Center’s recent campaign finance litigation summary, click here. 

The most recent updates of the litigation summaries are always available on the Legal Center website’s Litigation page. 

Today, four Albuquerque voters, plaintiffs in Baca v. Berry, a voting rights case currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, filed a motion for sanctions against the city and its attorneys for pursuing a frivolous cross-appeal in bad faith.  This cross-appeal had sought to force the voters to pay the city’s attorneys’ fees.  The voters are represented before the Tenth Circuit by the Campaign Legal Center.

The voters originally brought the case to challenge the City of Albuquerque’s redistricting plan for city council districts.  After the case was brought, Albuquerque voters passed a referendum that altered the way the city council is elected.  In light of this change in the law, the case was dismissed.  The city then sought to recover its attorneys’ fees from the voters and their attorneys.  The district court granted the city’s motion to sanction the voters’ attorneys for prolonging the case, ordering them to pay $48,000, but refused to award fees against the individual voters.  After the attorneys appealed this sanctions order to the Tenth Circuit, where they are represented by the law firm Jenner and Block, the city filed a cross-appeal seeking fees against the individual voters.  But the city presented essentially no legal argument in support of this cross-appeal and dropped the cross appeal at oral argument before the Tenth Circuit on May 6, 2015.  Rather than a good faith effort to recover its attorneys’ fees, the city’s cross-appeal was likely a bad faith attempt to intimidate civil rights plaintiffs and coerce their former attorneys into dropping their appeal.

“The City of Albuquerque and its Mayor acted shamelessly to intimidate and punish minority voters with gratuitous sanctions for attempting to safeguard their voting rights as residents of the city,” said Joshua Bone, the Legal Center attorney who argued before the Tenth Circuit.  “The city’s conduct was so reprehensible that the Albuquerque City Council passed a resolution condemning the city’s pursuit of attorneys’ fees against its own citizens.  We hope the court will see fit to rule in a manner that will dissuade other elected officials from abusing their office by bullying their own constituents and scaring them away from their recourse to the courts.”

To read the motion filed today seeking sanctions against the city, click here.