newsletter 10/16/24

Gearing Up for the 2024 Election and Racking Up More Court Wins

Protecting Democracy

With three weeks until the 2024 presidential election, we have been hard at work to protect our democracy.

We’re proudly representing Jolt Initiative, a Texas nonprofit that promotes civic engagement among young Latinos, in its suit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to stop his harassing document request that aims to chill Jolt from engaging in voter registration drives. The lawsuit alleges that his request for the names of all volunteer registrars and the voters they register, based on wholly unsupported allegations of registering noncitizens, violates the First and Fourth Amendments and constitutes intimidation under the Voting Rights Act. Paxton’s request is part of a broader pattern of overreaching investigations, and this is not our first time litigating against his office: This summer, we successfully protected Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley against Paxton’s effort to depose one of its representatives about the charity’s provision of humanitarian aid to recent immigrants, based again on wholly unsupported allegations, this time of facilitating illegal migration.
Our fight to protect the rights of a group of Ohio residents seeking to sponsor a ballot initiative under state law continues. Attorney General Dave Yost has repeatedly refused to approve and forward the proposed initiative to the state ballot board, depriving the residents from exercising their First Amendment rights to engage in political speech. ICAP’s Supreme Court Director Kelsi Brown Corkran will argue the case before the full Sixth Circuit later this month.
We also continue our public-facing work in the election space, speaking on panels about the risks of political violence in the upcoming election, providing training to state-level voting rights organizations, and updating our new “Election Hub” to include video explainers laying out key legal principles related to private paramilitary activity, false statements related to elections, voter intimidation, and true threats. The Election Hub includes all of ICAP’s relevant guidance relating to elections and polling places, and we hope it will assist leaders inside and outside government as they navigate potential threats.

As we head into Election Day, ICAP stands ready to continue the fight for fair elections, a peaceful transfer of power, and the freedom to be safe from political violence and intimidation.

Defending the Rule of Law

In September, ICAP’s Executive Director Mary McCord testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the implications of the Supreme Court’s recent immunity decision in Trump v. United States. Her written statement details the damage the decision does to the separation of powers embedded in our Constitution and to our ability to hold presidents and other executive-branch officials accountable for abuses of power.
Earlier this month, McCord and former Senior Policy Counsel Jacob Glick wrote about the evolving threat of unlawful private paramilitary groups since the attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021. The article offers a potential solution in the form of federal legislation, introduced earlier this year, which ICAP helped craft and which would prohibit specific defined actions taken by armed individuals acting as a part of, or on behalf of, a private paramilitary group.

Vindicating Constitutional Rights

As we gear up for the 2024 election, ICAP’s work to safeguard other constitutional rights and to address important issues such as gun violence and immigrant rights has not abated. We have filed briefs and secured important victories in several of our ongoing cases and even taken on new cases and appeals.

In legal victories:

ICAP obtained a favorable decision from the Ninth Circuit largely upholding the constitutionality of Hawai’i’s gun safety law barring firearms in sensitive places like parks and beaches and creating a default rule banning firearms on private property without owner consent.
We secured a final judgment on behalf of pretrial detainees too poor to pay cash bail or afford an attorney in Hamblen County, Tennessee, which enjoins local bail practices that violate the detainees’ rights to counsel and procedural due process.
And we successfully defended against Supreme Court review a Fifth Circuit victory allowing the damages claims of a prisoner who was unlawfully detained for 41 days past his release date to proceed.

In new matters:

In the Sixth Circuit, we filed a brief defending a jury’s award of damages to a same-sex couple who was repeatedly denied a marriage license by a county clerk in Kentucky who refused to follow the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell.
In the Seventh Circuit, we filed a brief on behalf of children in Indiana’s foster care system who seek to have their constitutional claims based on the state’s deliberate indifference to their basic needs litigated by a federal court.
In Indiana, we’re representing the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office in a lawsuit brought by the Indiana Attorney General claiming that the Sheriff’s immigration policy limiting local involvement in federal immigration enforcement violates state law. (Our representation of the Sheriff in this case builds upon our prior work successfully defending cities’ welcoming ordinances in Indiana.)