Right-Wing Group Files Federal Lawsuit Targeting Biden’s Voting Rights Order
The right-wing legal think tank America First Policy Institute (AFPI) filed a lawsuit on Friday challenging multiple aspects of a 2021 executive order that expands voting access throughout the country.
The lawsuit, filed by AFPI along with U.S. Reps Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) and Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas), Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) and former Texas State Rep. Matthew Krause (R), challenges several aspects of President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019.
The order promotes access to voting nationwide through a variety of initiatives, including allowing federal agencies to share data with states that want to establish automatic voter registration efforts and making federal workers and resources available to help at polling places.
Specifically, the AFPI lawsuit claims that the EO violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and other federal laws. The AFPI’s alleges that the EO violates the APA because it “requires the head of every federal agency to develop programs to register voters and to increase voter participation.”
The Trump campaign, RNC and other right-wing groups have filed dozens of anti-democracy lawsuits so far this cycle.
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Furthermore, the lawsuit claims the EO violates the NVRA’s mandate to protect the integrity of the electoral process because it “tasks federal agencies with spending taxpayer funds on GOTV plans that will increase turnout for President Biden and the Democratic Party” and “enlists a host of leftwing activist groups, who will receive federal money and resources to collaborate with President Biden and the Democratic Party to increase Democratic turnout for the 2024 election.”
The lawsuit also argues that the EO violates the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution because states have a primary role in conducting elections, with the federal government playing a cursory role in “enacting and enforcing statutes regulating the time, place, and manner of congressional elections, appointing the day when presidential electors are chosen, and enforcing constitutional guarantees regarding due process, equal protection, and nondiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, and age.”
It’s not the first right-wing lawsuit to challenge Biden’s EO. In January, Pennsylvania Republicans invoked the discredited Independent State Legislature (ISL) theory to challenge Biden’s EO, after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) implemented several programs to expand voting rights across the Commonwealth. The Pennsylvania lawsuit was dismissed for lack of standing in a district court on March 26. The lawsuit was appealed in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but the Republican plaintiffs also asked the U.S. Supreme Court in April to take on the case.