On September 23, 2019, CLC and Demos submitted a letter to Judge Lina Hidalgo and the Harris County Commissioners Court urging them to move forward with their plan to turn Harris County Jail into a polling location and provide voting machines to the eligible voters incarcerated there. Harris County Jail is one of the largest in the nation, incarcerating an average of 9,000 people daily. Most of Harris County Jail's population is held in pretrial detention or serving misdemeanor sentences, which means they retain their eligibility to vote under Texas law. However, Harris County provides no means by which many of these voters can cast their ballots. Our letter discusses Harris County's obligation to provide ballot access to these eligible voters and urges them to move forward with this initiative.

This manual is designed to provide advocates with the tools they need to take action to combat jail-based disenfranchisement and ensure eligible incarcerated voters can exercise their constitutional right to vote.

A supplemental handbook for community leaders and activists in Davidson County to help people with felony convictions restore their right to vote. To be used in tandem with the “Restore Your Vote Tennessee Rights Restoration Manual.”

A supplemental handbook for community leaders and activists in Shelby County to help people with felony convictions restore their right to vote. To be used in tandem with the “Restore Your Vote Tennessee Rights Restoration Manual.”

A checklist of tasks that can guide efforts to implement successfully a voting rights restoration law.

The district court in Alabama ruled on CLC’s supplemental complaint in an order entered on Dec. 3, 2019. The judge has allowed CLC to proceed to trial on all major claims.

On October 18, 2019, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida Tallahassee Division issued an order denying the motion to dismiss or abstain and granting a preliminary injunction. 

This summer, our Restore Your Vote organizers in Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis helped shepherd hundreds of Tennesseans with past convictions through the state’s voting rights restoration process. We submitted this testimony for a hearing on “discriminatory barriers to voting” to share some of the lessons we learned from working with Tennessee’s disenfranchisement scheme up close. In light of our extensive work on this issue in Tennessee and elsewhere, we urge Congress to include explicitly both felony disenfranchisement and re-enfranchisement procedures within the coverage of a new Voting Rights Act bill.

On November 8, 2019, CLC wrote to the Georgia Secretary of State on behalf of the League of Women Voters and League of Women Voters-Georgia to urge him to halt his planned purge of over 300,000 voters. The letter raises serious legal concerns with the purge and explains that a "use it or lose it" policy for voter registration punishes citizens who choose not to participate in every election and does not improve the integrity of the voter rolls. 

The court granted the Plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment and motion for class certification. The Court enjoined the State of Ohio from treating the class of late-jailed voters differently from late-hospitalized voters for purposes of absentee voting, and directed the Ohio Secretary of State and County Boards of Election to accept applications for absentee ballots from late-jailed voters that are properly delivered by 3:00 pm on Election Day. 

CLC sent a letter to Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill regarding a recent statement on felony disenfranchisement in Alabama. 

In addition to bringing claims on their own behalf, the Raysor Plaintiffs brought claims on behalf of a class of all Floridians who would be eligible for rights restoration, but for the fact they have outstanding legal financial obligations. On Septemebr 26, 2019, the Raysor Plaintiffs filed a motion to certifiy their class action.

Supplemental brief filed in support of Jones v. DeSantis.

CLC, on behalf of the Alabama Voting Rights Project, submitted written testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Administration's Subcommittee on Elections for the hearing in Birmingham, Alabama on "Voting Rights and Election Administration" on May 13, 2019. CLC encouraged Congress to revive the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance formula and asked that it use its powers under the 14th and 15th Amendments to end felony disenfranchisement in Alabama.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) submitted written testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Judiciary's Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties for the hearing on “Discriminatory Barriers to Voting” in Memphis, Tennessee on September 5, 2018. CLC recommended that Congress ensure that a restored Voting Rights Act explicitly covers both felony disenfranchisement and re-enfranchisement laws, practices, and procedures to ensure that all racially discriminatory practices and procedures are eliminated from our democratic process. 

On October 3, 2019, CLC filed a reply brief on merits in the Supreme Court of Florida. 

"Constitutional Challenges Facing Our Democracy: The Roberts Court’s Wrong Turns on Campaign Finance, Gerrymandering, and Voting Rights," a speech given by Trevor Potter at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana.

On September 12, CLC filed an amicus curiae (friend-of-the-court) brief in support of the Plaintiffs in New York Immigration Coalition, et al. v. Rensselaer County Board of Elections, et al. CLC’s brief aims to clarify the history and proper interpretation of Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits voter intimidation. CLC’s brief also argues that the conduct Plaintiffs allege is a modern form of the type of conduct that Section 11(b) was designed to prohibit.

Opinion granting the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction and ordering the state not to enforce the challenged provisions of the law.

Judge Aleta A. Trauger for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, issued a decision denying the State of Tennessee’s request to dismiss a legal challenge to a new state law that would restrict and penalize voter registration efforts.