Challenge to the Texas Governor’s October proclamation limiting where voters can hand-deliver mail-in ballots to a single site per county, effectively closing additional ballot drop-off locations throughout the state.

Intervening in the district court case started by the Texas Civil Rights Project to pursue Equal Protection claims against the state. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires that a state allow for simultaneous application for voter registration along with motor vehicle transactions, including license renewals and change of address. For online transactions, Texas currently has a box people check that states “yes, I would like to register to vote,” but that does not actually register you. The district court found that the state has provided no interest at all to justify this law and struck it down as unconstitutional, but the victory was reversed after the plaintiffs updated their registration. Our intervention will use the entire evidentiary record already before the district court to reinstate this victory. We successfully one our preliminary injunction motion, where the court ordered the state to comply with the NVRA.

Constitutional challenge to a recent change in Texas law that limits the discretion of county election administrators in providing temporary early voting locations. These locations, which opened for limited hours and days during the two-week early voting period, were used to provide early voting opportunities for groups with limited access to transportation, including students. We contend that this law imposes an unconstitutional burden on the voting rights of students in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and also violates the Equal Protection Clause and Twenty-Sixth Amendment.

Constitutional challenge to Texas’s ballot order statute, which requires that candidates of the political party of the Governor be listed first on the ballot in all elections. Expert analysis shows that the first listed candidate on the ballot receives a certain percentage of additional votes solely due to their ballot position. We contend that the statute unduly burdens the right to vote in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments and treats similarly situated candidates differently without sufficient justification, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Challenging the State’s elimination of straight ticket voting that will go into effect in 2020 for the first time. Straight ticket voting is widely used by voters in Texas—a state that often employs long ballots—as in the 2018 election, two-thirds of voters cast a straight ticket vote. The elimination of straight ticket voting will likely lead to longer lines and wait times for all voters, which would likely deter voting. In addition, the elimination of straight ticket voting would likely lead to voter confusion and increased difficulty in casting a ballot.

Challenging Texas over its announced prohibition against accepting electronically signed voter registration applications. The wet signature rule imposes an arbitrary requirement that limits access to the franchise and forces organizations like Plaintiffs to expend additional resources in order to assist potential registrants in complying with antiquated, bureaucratic rules that serve no legitimate State interest.

We sued to protect Texans who will seek to vote by mail in November’s general election. On behalf of Voto Latino, the Texas State Conference of the NAACP, the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans and individual voters, we challenged all Four Pillars in Texas that, in light of the coronavirus pandemic, will severely burden Texans’ right to vote. Our lawsuit asks Texas to provide prepaid postage for absentee ballots, accept all ballots postmarked on or before Election Day, prohibit enforcement of signature matching, allow voters the opportunity to correct a signature mismatch, and allow voters to designate any third party to collect their voted and sealed absentee ballot.