Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Microsoft, American Airlines, Dell, and other major corporations have begun speaking out against laws restricting the right to vote. Black Fortune 500 executives are challenging their colleagues to oppose discriminatory voter legislation. So, where is the legal profession?

Our latest Open Letter calls on law firms, bar associations, and law schools to speak and act to protect and expand voter rights. To date, it has been signed by nearly 2,000 of you, including over 1,600 lawyers, three former presidents of the American Bar Association, 100 current and former law school deans and professors, former General Counsels of prominent U.S. companies, and over three dozen former federal, state, and municipal judges. Individual signers of note include: 

• Brad S. Karp, the Chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, one of the pre-eminent law firms in the country,

• Robert Abrams, former Attorney General of the State of New York, 

• Barbara A. Black, Dean Emerita of Columbia Law School, and Gary J. Simson, Macon Chair in Law, Mercer University School of Law, and

• Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father and lawyer who offered to share his copy of the U.S. Constitution with then-candidate Donald J. Trump. 

Multiple outlets have published articles on this latest LDAD initiative, including Bloomberg Law, the New York Law Journal, Law 360, and the Connecticut Law Tribune. 

We must keep the pressure on! If you have not yet signed, we hope you will do so now and encourage your colleagues to do the same. If you have already signed, we thank you.

Steering Committee, Lawyers Defending American Democracy