Court Allows Lawsuits Challenging Georgia Voter Suppression Law to Proceed
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia rejected various attempts to dismiss eight lawsuits challenging Georgia’s new voter suppression law, Senate Bill 202. Following the passage of S.B. 202 in March 2021, a flurry of lawsuits were filed by various voting and civil rights groups, individual voters and the U.S. Department of Justice challenging the bill. (A ninth case, Whiteside v. Raffensperger, was filed later in the summer and therefore not on the same timeline as the other cases.) While each case raises its own arguments, all focus on the voter suppression provisions of S.B. 202, including new identification requirements for absentee voting, limits on the use of absentee drop boxes, restrictions on the collection of absentee ballots, the criminalization of “line warming” and more. Multiple Republican committees successfully intervened in the cases to defend the voter suppression bill. Alongside the GOP, Georgia state and county officials sought to dismiss the lawsuits, raising various arguments challenging the standing and merits of the cases’ claims. Today, the court rejected every single motion to dismiss, holding that each set of plaintiffs had standing to bring their claims and had sufficiently pleaded each claim. All eight lawsuits will move forward and claims against S.B. 202 will be litigated to determine if the law violates the U.S. Constitution and/or the Voting Rights Act.
You can find the orders denying the motions to dismiss in each case below:
New Georgia Project v. Raffensperger
Georgia State Conference of the NAACP v. Raffensperger
Sixth District of the AME Church v. Kemp
Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta v. Raffensperger
Concerned Black Clergy v. Raffensperger