Your weekly source for analysis and insight from experts at the Brennan Center for Justice

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The Briefing

Trump’s Big Lie of widespread voter fraud continues to echo beyond the violent attack on the Capitol. In state legislatures across the country, politicians are capitalizing on his campaign of disinformation to push aggressive legislation to make it harder to vote.

In just the first month of 2021, according to our new analysis

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, state lawmakers have already introduced 106 bills in 28 states that would restrict voting access. That’s three times as many as this time last year. In Pennsylvania alone, 14 bills have been introduced to curb the vote.

Nationwide, most would limit or eliminate voting by mail and other improvements in voter access made in response to the pandemic. Others, however, would impose stricter voter ID requirements, limit voter registration policies, and allow more aggressive voter roll purges.

Just yesterday, Republican legislators in Georgia introduced a bill to effectively eliminate absentee balloting, ban drop boxes, and repeal automatic voter registration.

Subtle, this ain’t.

The new surge in voter suppression bills is a backlash to the historic voter turnout of the 2020 general election. It flows directly from the bid to cut out the votes of majority Black cities during the bid to overturn the results. Politicians who push and support voter suppression aim to rob Black and brown Americans of their say in our democracy. As my colleague Eliza Sweren-Becker told Vox

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, “Rather than going out and trying to persuade voters, we’re seeing legislators trying to shrink the electorate in order to ensure job security for themselves.”

Let’s not mince words: if you support voter suppression, you stand with the Proud Boys and their racist authoritarianism.

It’s worth noting that the news from the states is not all bad. So far in 2021, state lawmakers from 35 states have introduced a total of 406 bills that would expand voting access. A significant number of these bills have been introduced in states like Mississippi, Missouri, and Texas, places with a long, sordid history of voter suppression.

These state efforts reflect the widespread support for democracy reform. At the national level, members of Congress are working to pass the For the People Act, a historic bill that, if enacted, would mark a major step toward strengthening America’s elections system.

Our government should be working to dismantle barriers to voting, not adding them.

Democracy

How to Strengthen the Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act, clearing the path for states to pass a slew of laws that disenfranchise voters and discriminate against voters of color. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would combat racial discrimination in voting by bolstering the landmark law’s safeguards. “We need to have the protections of the Voting Rights Act in place,” says Myrna Pérez. “Americans deserve an election system that is free from racial discrimination in voting.” // Read More

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Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy

The defeated president’s instigation of an insurrection was… unusual. It came after four years in which Trump smashed or ignored long-standing guardrails of our democratic system — unwritten rules, in many cases, that turned out to be flimsy or unenforceable. After periods of abuse, often reform follows. What can be done to restore these protections? Brennan Center experts discuss some of the answers, including the Protecting Our Democracy Act. // Read More

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Uncivil Religion in an Uncivil War

America has long been defined by its “civil religion” — found in historical myths and the statues we erect to commemorate them. The flag, the Constitution, the American Dream — this iconography is woven into American consciousness. Alex Cohen considers whether it is possible for President Biden to beat back Trump’s cultish religious nationalism and modernize its civil religious creed to include those who have been left out. “For the soul of America to better reflect the diversity of its people, the civil religion that our leaders preach must be more concerned with achieving justice than on some mythologized past or inevitable destiny,” writes Cohen. // Newsweek

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Justice

Biden Directs DOJ to Phase Out Use of Private Prisons

In an executive order signed last week, the president directed the Department of Justice not to renew any contracts with private prisons that house federal inmates. Lauren-Brooke Eisen called the order an important first step, but she also noted that it covered just 9 percent of the federal prison population and that many of the contracts have just started 10-year terms. “If the administration is serious about removing profit from incarceration, they need to look at DHS and ICE contracts with these firms.” // The Hill

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Constitution

Declaring Climate Change an ‘Emergency’ Won’t Help Biden Fight It

President Biden has unveiled a plan to address climate change that includes aggressive executive actions. However, it does not include the national emergency declaration advocated by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer — an omission that is the “right call,” according to Elizabeth Goitein. “Even though it may be the planet’s greatest crisis, as a long-standing problem requiring long-term solutions, climate change isn’t an ‘emergency,’” writes Goitein. “Using emergency powers to address it would be a misuse of those powers — one that carries significant risks for our democracy without providing the tools we need to confront the challenge.” // Washington Post

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Police Officers, Insurrection Day, and the First Amendment

When it comes to free speech, there are limitations when it comes to whether police officers can both express certain views and do their jobs. Brennan Center Fellow Andrew Cohen looks at the constitutional law around whether cops can be fired for attending the January 6 Trump rally that turned into a riot. Cohen argues that if a police officer decides to go to a rally based on obvious lies about nonexistent election fraud, it calls into question their ability to do their job. // Read More

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Coming Up

VIRTUAL EVENT: Bad Partners: Why Local Law Enforcement Should Leave FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces

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Thursday, February 11 | 5:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m. ET

FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) inflict harm on local communities through racial profiling, harassment, suspicionless surveillance and investigations, and exploitation of immigration enforcement, all of which are authorized under federal guidelines loosened after 9/11. The FBI relies on the labor of state and local law enforcement officers assigned to the JTTFs, who agree to follow federal guidelines even if they conflict with state and local law. Civil rights advocates and community groups have organized successful campaigns to demand that their city legislatures hold local police accountable to local laws and ultimately withdraw from the JTTFs. Advocates from these campaigns, including Zahra Billoo (executive director, CAIR-SFBA), Javeria Jamil (staff attorney, Asian Americans Advancing Justice/Asian Law Caucus), and Brandon Mayfield (Oregon lawyer and activist), will share their experience with Brennan Center Fellow Mike German. RSVP today

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This event is produced in partnership with New York University’s John Brademas Center.

VIRTUAL EVENT: America’s Broken Legal System

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Wednesday, February 17 | 6:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m. ET

Too often, the criminal justice system compels innocent people to plead guilty. It disproportionately incarcerates Black and brown Americans, often for relatively minor offenses. Meanwhile, high-level executives are rarely prosecuted or held accountable for much more serious crimes. Jed S. Rakoff, a federal trial judge and an expert on white-collar crime, examines these and other paradoxes in a new book, Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free: And Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System

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He will be joined by Hernandez Stroud, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, to discuss the shortcomings of the country’s legal system and propose paths to reform. RSVP today

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This event is produced in partnership with New York University’s John Brademas Center.

News

Lauren-Brooke Eisen on Vice President Harris’s opportunity to champion reforms that improve conditions for women in prison // Bloomberg Law

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Michael German on the Justice Department’s blind spot for domestic terrorism // New York Times

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Laura Hecht-Felella on the privacy concerns related to coronavirus contact tracing // The Legal Examiner

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Myrna Pérez on the new wave of proposals by state lawmakers aimed at restricting the vote // Associated Press

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Jennifer Weiss-Wolf on menstrual equity in 2021 // Marie Claire

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Have an issue you'd like us to cover? Feedback on this newsletter? Email us at [email protected]

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to reform, revitalize – and when necessary defend – our country’s systems of democracy and justice.

Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

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New York, NY 10271

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