Seventh Suit Filed Against Georgia Suppression Bill
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A seventh lawsuit has been filed challenging Georgia’s voter suppression law, Senate Bill 202, which Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed into law at the end of March. The new lawsuit, brought by the Coalition for Good Governance and individual voters, alleges that the provisions of the law — including the gag rule prohibiting monitors and observers from communicating if they see something suspicious, a ban on photography of electronic ballots, an expanded voter ID rule and more — are unconstitutional violations of the right to free speech and pose undue burdens on the right to vote.
S.B. 202 includes a host of voter suppression measures like shortened absentee ballot timelines, drop box restrictions, the criminalization of “line warming” and much more. The Coalition for Good Governance is the latest organization to sue Georgia over its new law; many voting rights groups sued in the weeks after S.B. 202’s passage, starting with the New Georgia Project, followed by the Georgia NAACP, the ACLU, VoteAmerica and more. These various lawsuits allege that the legislation violates the First, 14th and 15th Amendments as well as Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.