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

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The Briefing

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a massive voter suppression bill into law yesterday. It’s one more addition to the wave of voting restrictions being enacted

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across the country in response to former President Trump’s Big Lie of a stolen election.

Senate Bill 1 makes it harder for voters with disabilities or language-access barriers to get assistance. It also makes it easier for poll watchers to harass voters and election officials. And, it bans 24-hour and drive-thru voting, measures enacted to make it safer and easier to vote during the pandemic, which continues to be especially bad in Texas.

Last week, before Abbott even had a chance to sign the bill, we filed a federal lawsuit

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to stop the worst provisions, working with our co-counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the Harris County Attorney’s Office, and the law firms of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP.

Our lawsuit lays out how the law violates the First, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Voting Rights Act. Texas’s attack on voting rights is blatantly unlawful and pointlessly cruel.

Abbott and the Republican state lawmakers responsible for this travesty claim it’s all about “election integrity.” But this whopper doesn’t hold up to any sort of scrutiny. Like everywhere else in the country, there is absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Abbott knows this. His own attorney general spent 22,000 hours looking for fraud. What did he find? Sixteen cases of false addresses on registration forms in a pool of nearly 17 million registered voters. Then his own secretary of state’s office told Republican lawmakers what they didn’t want to hear: “Texas had an election that was smooth and secure.”

We’re representing a wide range of plaintiffs, including the interfaith advocacy organization Texas Impact, the Austin chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, and Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria. This group represents the diverse array of Texans whose voice the state is trying to silence, all of them united in defending democracy in the Lone Star State.

Texas was already among the states that made it hardest to vote in this country, and this latest attack on voting access brings it closer to the bottom of the heap. As the next election draws near, there’s no time to waste. Congress must listen to Texas Democrats, and other defenders of the American people’s hard-fought right to vote, and pass the For the People Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

The bills, both of which have passed the House, are a one-two punch against voter suppression and would stop the worst restrictions from being implemented before the next slate of federal elections.

Democracy

The Impact of New State Voting Laws

State voter suppression laws are alarming. Will they have an impact? It’s hard to know for sure, of course. As baseball great Yogi Berra said, “I never make predictions, especially about the future.” But we can assess many potential negative effects. For example, if a law reduces the number of ballot drop boxes, it’s useful to look at how many people used those boxes in the last election. A new Brennan Center resource does just that with rundowns of new restrictive voting laws in six states — Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Montana, and Texas — with information for each measure on how voters are impacted, and estimates of how many. “In some cases,” our resource observes, “a single obstacle can impact hundreds of thousands of voters, while in other instances multiple policies compound, causing voting access to suffer death by a thousand cuts.” // Read More

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How We Can Help Election Officials

After administering the “most secure” election in American history last year, election officials have come under unprecedented attack, with threats to both their work and to the well-being of officials and their families. In a new analysis, Lawrence Norden details what local, state, and federal governments can do to help. // Read More

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Constitution

Rolling Back the Post-9/11 Surveillance State

The passage of the Patriot Act after 9/11 brought with it surveillance abuses reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s, with negligible benefits to national security. In an essay from the Brennan Center’s 9/11 at 20 series

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, Elizabeth Goitein argues for a much needed course correction. “In the next 20 years, depending on what steps we take now, the United States can become a surveillance state in the mold of China — or we can realize our aspirations to be a country in which people of all races, ethnicities, religions, and political beliefs are free to live their lives and speak their minds without fear,” she writes. // Read More

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Combating White Supremacy

The Biden administration is looking to use post-9/11 counterterrorism tactics against escalating far-right violence. Michael German, a former FBI counterterrorism agent who went undercover with white supremacist groups, and Harsha Panduranga warn that such a path carries the risk of repeating mistakes that were made after 9/11. “Directing [law enforcement agents] to counter ‘radical’ ideologies or identify ill-defined ‘concerning behaviors’ will undoubtedly lead to the targeting of those who challenge the status quo — immigrant communities, communities of color, religious minorities, and activists — rather than white supremacists,” they write. // Read More

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Justice

Biden’s Executive Order on Private Prisons

On the campaign trail, President Biden promised to halt the federal government’s use of private prisons. But his executive order on the issue falls short of that goal, leading to loopholes and unintended consequences. “It would be more impactful if the Biden administration focused on how to reduce the number of people in our federal and state prisons, local jails, and ICE detention facilities,” writes Lauren-Brooke Eisen. // Read More

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Coming Up

VIRTUAL EVENT: Guns vs. Speech: Does the 2nd Amendment Threaten the 1st?

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Tuesday, September 14 // 12–1:15 p.m. ET

Over the last year, peaceful demonstrators across the United States have been met by armed individuals and self-proclaimed “militias.” Can speech be free when armed counter-protesters mix with unarmed protesters? Should state laws regarding the presence of guns at polling places be strengthened?

To answer these questions — and look at what this looming conflict may mean in the Supreme Court — Brennan Center Fellow Eric Ruben (SMU Dedman School of Law) joins prominent legal scholars Mary Anne Franks (University of Miami School of Law), Darrell Miller (Duke University School of Law), Eugene Volokh (UCLA School of Law), and Timothy Zick (William & Mary Law School). RSVP today

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

Want to keep up with Brennan Center events? Subscribe to the events newsletter.

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News

Michael Li on gerrymandering’s threat to communities of color // BOSTON GLOBE

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Sean Morales-Doyle on our voting rights lawsuit against Texas // THE HILL

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Lawrence Norden on state attempts to control local election boards // NBC NEWS

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Yurij Rudensky on redistricting in North Carolina // SPARTANBURG HERALD-JOURNAL

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Daniel Weiner on transparency reform at the SEC // REUTERS

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

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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.

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