Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that a President is immune from criminal prosecution based on any exercise of his “core” presidential powers, even if his goal was to overturn a lawful election. 

The Court majority thus made clear that any corrupt order given to the Department of Justice is immune – and it presumably follows that a President is free as well to give any order to the military, however criminal, without fear of prosecution. 

The Court did rule that Trump can still be prosecuted for some official acts, and for any “unofficial acts.” That means that some parts of the pending federal indictment against Trump in D.C. may survive. But there will first need to be months if not years of judicial work to sort out precisely which criminal charges, if any, remain permissible.   

Paul M. Smith, senior vice president of Campaign Legal Center, released the following statement:

"Our democracy depends on the rule of law. That means that any elected officials who intentionally abuse their powers, especially in an effort to undermine democratic accountability, should be held accountable. That includes the President of the United States. 

"The U.S. Supreme Court had an opportunity to make it clear that no one is above the law. Instead, it has paved the way for an extremely dangerous new form of government, unprecedented in the history of our nation, by immunizing vast swaths of illegal and harmful presidential conduct from prosecution.

"In the meantime, the Court’s ruling makes it highly unlikely that a trial for the former President will occur before Election Day, depriving voters of the right to know whether someone running in the 2024 presidential election is guilty of attempting to overthrow the last one. But the long-term consequences of this ruling go far beyond 2024 and our current controversies."

Washington, D.C. — Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) released a report to help lawmakers, experts, activists and citizens look to the lessons of the 2021 redistricting cycle and understand how a well-designed redistricting commission can deliver fair representation and what the process to get there should look like.  

This report focuses on three overarching aspects of redistricting commissions: how they’re designed, how the commissioners are equipped and how the rules governing commissions can ensure they deliver on their promises.

Click Here to View the Report

Through case studies that analyze redistricting commissions in different states and with different structures, the report outlines several features that make redistricting commissions successful and draws attention to issues that tend to prevent commissions from reaching their potential. A two-page summary of the report can be found here.

Redistricting commissions should be:  

• Truly independent and insulated from legislative and other political influence.
• Vested with the full authority of redistricting.
• Made up entirely of citizen commissioners who are broadly representative of the diversity of their state.
• Evenly split between the primary political party, secondary political party, and Independents.
• Large enough to disperse responsibilities, encourage collaboration and compromise, and prevent one or two outlier commissioners from derailing the process.
• Made up of commissioners empowered to understand and make decisions regarding the complexities of redistricting.
• Assisted by trustworthy and knowledgeable staff and advisors, selected through a process designed to give commissions a broad base of options.
• Guided by clearly defined and ranked criteria protective of the rights of every voter.
• Making decisions and drawing maps with processes aimed toward building consensus as opposed to rewarding contention.
• Redistricting through a participatory, inclusive, and transparent process.
• Required to demonstrate how the final maps incorporate public input.
• Ensuring the enactment of fair maps through a clear, specific fallback mechanism.

Background:  

When the people in charge of drawing voting maps are the same people who stand to benefit from influencing those maps, voters lose. When structured correctly, independent redistricting commissions (IRCs) can prevent gerrymandering and deliver fair maps for voters by taking decisions about where to draw district lines out of the hands of politicians and handing that power back to citizens. CLC has long been a proponent of IRCs, having advocated for the creation of independent redistricting commissions across the country and defended them in court.  

For more information, or to speak with the report’s authors, please contact [email protected]. 

Washington, DC — Yesterday, news broke that the Tennessee secretary of state’s office sent over 14,000 letters asking certain voters to prove they are American citizens before the November election. Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at Campaign Legal Center (CLC) issued the following statement in response:  

“The freedom to vote should be accessible to every American, regardless of where they were born. Tennessee’s use of unreliable data to target and harass new Americans into canceling their voter registration is textbook voter intimidation disguised as list maintenance and only aims to sow fear among voters.    

“There is no place in our democracy for state-sponsored voter intimidation, including by demanding that naturalized citizens ‘show their papers’ to prove they are sufficiently American after they have already affirmed their citizenship through the voter registration process.

“Federal law provides safeguards to protect eligible voters from being wrongfully removed from the voter registration rolls, and states like Tennessee are not permitted to demand additional documentation from voters — including naturalized citizens — based on stale and faulty data. CLC calls on Tennessee election officials to clarify that voters will not be removed from the registration rolls based on unreliable and outdated data so every Tennessean can participate in a free and fair election without fear this November.”

Background:  

Voter list maintenance is a routine practice that, when done correctly, increases the accuracy of voter rolls by removing people who pass away or who no longer live in the state. Voter list maintenance is conducted in every state according to state and federal law to ensure that voter lists are kept timely and up to date without wrongfully removing eligible voters from the rolls.

Federal law, specifically the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), prevents states from systematically removing people from voter rolls based solely on unreliable sources of data — like Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) data. DMV information is not a reliable enough source for citizenship information, as it only reflects an individual’s status at the time of their last interaction with the DMV — not their current citizenship status.  

For example, if someone goes to the DMV to get a driver’s license while they are a legal permanent resident and then later becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen and registers to vote, the DMV’s information about that person’s citizenship status will be out of date. Stale data should not prevent any American from exercising their freedom to vote.  

The NVRA also prevents states from requiring new Americans to provide additional documentation to prove their citizenship beyond the information and affirmation required of all voters.

When voter roll maintenance is done incorrectly, voter purges can occur — which can result in large swaths of eligible voters being incorrectly removed from their state’s list of registered voters and denied the freedom to vote. Voter purges tend to disproportionately target new Americans, people with past felony convictions, low-income voters, young people and voters of color.

CLC sued Texas’ secretary of state over their voter purge effort in 2019, which unlawfully targeted tens of thousands of naturalized citizens for removal from voter registration rolls based on stale and unreliable citizenship data.  

Read a first-hand account of how voter purges targeting new Americans intimidate voters and undermine their freedom to vote here: “I’ve Been a U.S. Citizen Since 2015. My State is Threatening to Purge Me from the Rolls,” by Texas voter Julie Hilberg.

Tennessee’s use of overly broad criteria for denying Americans their right to vote is also the subject of another lawsuit, Tennessee NAACP v. Lee. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee recently ruled that Tennessee’s practice of denying voter registrations from all applicants with prior felony convictions and demanding documentary proof of eligibility violates the NVRA because — like people who at one time were non-citizens — not all people who have been convicted of felonies are disqualified from voting in Tennessee. Tennessee’s practice of requiring certain citizens to provide additional burdensome documentation before being able to register and vote is a clear violation of federal law.