51Æ·²è

On March 25, 2025, in a sweeping and unprecedented Executive Order, President Trump attempted to usurp the power to regulate federal elections from Congress and the States. Among other things, the Executive Order directs the Election Assistance Commission—an agency that Congress specifically established to be bipartisan and independent—to require voters to show a passport or other citizenship documentation in order to register to vote in federal elections. If implemented, the Executive Order would threaten the ability of millions of eligible Americans to register and vote and upend the administration of federal elections. On behalf of leading voter registration organizations and advocacy organizations, the 51Æ·²è and co-counsel filed a lawsuit to block the Executive Order as an unconstitutional power grab.

Whether the congressional map Louisiana adopted to cure a Voting Rights Act violation in Robinson v. Ardoin is itself unlawful as a gerrymander.

This lawsuit challenges HB 1569, a new law that will make New Hampshire the only state to require every person to produce documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote for both state and federal elections. It also challenges HB 1569’s elimination a preexisting protection for voters—namely, an affidavit option that allowed voters who faced surprise challenges to their eligibility at the polls to swear to their qualifications and cast a ballot. Accordingly, HB 1569 violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by placing substantial burdens on New Hampshirites at all stages of the voting process, and will arbitrarily disenfranchise hundreds, if not thousands of qualified voters.

The 51Æ·²è, the 51Æ·²è of Ohio, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the law firm WilmerHale, and Fanon Rucker of the Cochran Law Firm, on behalf of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, Preterm-Cleveland, Women’s Med Group Professional Corporation, Dr. Sharon Liner, and Julia Quinn, MSN, BSN, amended a complaint in an existing lawsuit against a ban on telehealth medication abortion services to bring new claims under the Ohio Reproductive Freedom Amendment, including additional challenges to other laws in Ohio that restrict access to medication abortion in the state.

The 51Æ·²è and partner organizations intervened in this case to represent the rights of voters and voting-rights organizations in a case challenging a number of rules passed by the Georgia State Election Board. We challenged the rule requiring that the number of votes cast be hand counted at the polling place prior to the tabulation of votes. In a critical victory for Georgia voters, in June 2025, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision permanently blocking the rule requiring hand counting of ballots at polling places before tabulation — a process widely criticized for risking delays, ballot spoliation, and voter disenfranchisement.

Whether Alabama’s congressional districts violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because they discriminate against Black voters. We succeeded in winning a new map for 2024 elections which, for the first time, has two congressional district that provide Black voters a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choosing despite multiple attempts by Alabama to stop us at the Supreme Court. Despite this win, Alabama is still defending its discriminatory map, and a trial was held in February 2025 to determine the map for the rest of the decade. In May 2025, a federal court ruled that Alabama's 2023 congressional map both violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and was enacted by the Alabama Legislature with racially discriminatory intent.

This case involves a state constitutional challenge to South Carolina’s 2022 congressional redistricting plan, which legislators admit was drawn to entrench a 6-1 Republican majority in the state’s federal delegation. Plaintiff the League of Women Voters of South Carolina has asked the state’s Supreme Court to conclude that the congressional map is an unlawful partisan gerrymander that violates the state constitution.

Texas has growing Hispanic and Black populations that helped propel record voter turnout in the November 2020 election. The Texas Legislature responded to this increased civic participation with an omnibus election bill titled Senate Bill 1—SB 1 for short—that targeted election practices that made voting more accessible to traditionally marginalized voters like voters of color, voters with disabilities, and voters with limited English proficiency. Since 2021, SB 1 has resulted in tens of thousands of lawful votes being rejected, and it remains a threat to democracy in Texas.

Idaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Idaho politicians seeking to disregard a federal statute — the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) — and put doctors in jail for providing pregnant patients necessary emergency medical care. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on this case on April 24, 2024. The Court’s ultimate decision will impact access to this essential care across the country.