Multiple Civil Rights Groups File Suit Over Texas Voting Rights Law

A number of civil rights organizations instantly filed lawsuits in opposition to a brand new voter integrity regulation signed handed by the GOP-controlled Texas legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott.

The teams say that the brand new regulation makes it more durable for minorities to solid ballots and allege that the measure is admittedly aimed toward suppressing voting, not enhancing it.

Nevertheless, in signing the invoice, Abbott stated its intention is to ensure that each Texan eligible to vote has the liberty and proper to take action whereas making it more durable to cheat.

One go well with was filed by the NAACP Authorized Protection Fund instantly after the measure was signed into regulation, with the group saying the invoice “deliberately targets and burdens strategies and technique of voting utilized by voters of shade.”

One other go well with was filed by The Attorneys’ Committee for Civil Rights Underneath Legislation and Dechert LLP in state district court docket in Harris County on behalf of the Texas State Convention of the NAACP and Widespread Trigger Texas in addition to others, in accordance with Axios.

“Texas legislators know precisely what they’re attempting to do – use brazen techniques to disenfranchise Black voters, Latinx voters, and different voters of shade who’re a rising a part of the citizens and who turned out and made their voices heard in 2020,” Damon Hewitt, president and government director of the Attorneys’ Committee for Civil Rights Underneath Legislation, claimed.

LULAC and Voto Latino have filed a lawsuit as effectively, becoming a member of Texas American Federation of Academics and the Texas Alliance for Retired People.

These teams additionally declare that the brand new regulation places “an undue burden on the fitting to vote,” whereas including that the regulation “purposely” restricts entry to voters of shade, in addition to voters with disabilities and restricted English abilities.

Abbott disagreed, nevertheless, declaring, “This invoice will make it simpler to vote and more durable to cheat.”

He added that the invoice “ensures that each eligible voter can have the chance to vote” by increasing the variety of hours polling locations stay open, “fixes [the] downside” of fraud-prone mail-in balloting by requiring an ID, and makes poll harvesting a felony within the third diploma.

Texas Democrats managed to delay passage of the invoice by fleeing the state final month and denying majority Republicans a quorum. Most of them flew to Washington, D.C., the place they held conferences with varied Democratic officers and lawmakers in addition to Vice President Kamala Harris. They started streaming again into the state after Republicans and Abbott threatened to have the arrested and delivered to the Capitol in Austin for a particular session the governor had known as.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in Could took Democrats and their media supporters to activity for all the time falling again on race as a cudgel to make use of in opposition to GOP political opponents.

“Nicely, look, sadly, the left usually traffics in racism and bigotry and their view is that any minority, I’m Hispanic, in the event you’re Hispanic, in the event you’re African American, you aren’t allowed to disagree along with your leftist overlords,” Cruz stated.

“You need to obey their orthodoxy or they are going to ridicule you. They’ll assault you, they’ll mock you, and I obtained to say, the left actually is kind of snug with seeing that sort of bigotry play out.”

Cruz and most different Republicans in Congress have been pushing again on Democratic laws that may quantity to a dramatic overhaul of state voting legal guidelines, placing elections extra in charge of the federal authorities.