Specifically, they are challenging a couple of specific provisions of the law.
The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday sued Texas over its new voting law, expanding its effort to challenge Republican-backed measures passed in state legislatures.
The lawsuit, brought by the DOJ’s civil rights division in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, challenges provisions in the Texas law, known as SB 1, that place new procedural requirements on voting by mail and restrict the assistance voters with disabilities or those who struggle to read and write are able to receive in filling out a ballot.
Those provisions “deny eligible voters meaningful assistance in the voting booth and require rejection of mail ballot materials for immaterial errors or omissions,” the department’s complaint alleges.
The lawsuit is the second one the DOJ’s civil rights division has brought this year challenging a state law placing new restrictions on voting. The department sued Georgia in June over a law the federal government alleged disproportionately harmed voters of color.
[…]
Unlike the case against Georgia, the DOJ’s suit against Texas was not brought under the section of the Voting Rights Act that focuses on voter discrimination based on race.
Rather, the complaint filed Thursday focuses on a section of the law requiring voter assistance for those who need it based on “blindness, disability or inability to read or write.” The suit was also filed under a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banning people from being denied the right to vote based on clerical errors or omissions that are “not material” in determining if someone is qualified to vote.
The complaint does mention the history of voting discrimination in Texas and the growth of minority populations in the state in recent years, but the claims based on race or ethnicity all have to do with the restrictions the law places on help made available to voters who speak languages other than English.
The Texas law confines the role of voting “assistors” to reading the ballot or helping to mark the ballot, barring individuals who provide help from “answering a voter’s questions, explaining the voting process, paraphrasing complex language, and providing other forms of voting assistance that some qualified voters require to cast an informed and effective vote,” according to the complaint.
The lawsuit also takes aim at measures that require voters to provide an identification number, such as a driver’s license or election identification certificate, in requesting a mail-in ballot.
“Conditioning the right to cast a mail ballot on a voter’s ability to recall and recite the identification number provided on an application for voter registration months or years before will curtail fundamental voting rights without advancing any legitimate state interest,” the lawsuit alleges.
It’s been a little while since the initial flurry of lawsuits against SB1, long enough that I had forgotten that there were already six lawsuits over this thing: Two lawsuits filed before the bill was signed, by Harris County and a coalition of voters, one filed in Austin and one in San Antonio; a trio of lawsuits filed right after it was signed, one each in federal court by Democracy Docket and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and one in state court by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; and one a month later, which is to now say a month ago, by Mi Familia Vota. As I said at the time, it was not clear to me why the Lawyers’ Committee one was filed in state court. Those lawsuits were all presented as being broader claims about racial discrimination, much like that DOJ lawsuit against Georgia, while this one is more focused on a couple of specific items in the law. I don’t know if that was a strategic choice or just a recognition that the broader issues were already being addressed.
The Trib adds a few more details.
The state has long allowed voters who need assistance casting ballots to have someone help them, as long as those assisting don’t try to influence the actual votes. SB 1 places new constraints on what those assistants may do. They cannot answer questions, clarify translations, explain the voting process or paraphrase complex language, the federal lawsuit says.
The law also creates potential criminal penalties for people who assist voters. A person assisting a voter is required to fill out paperwork disclosing their relationship to that voter. They must also recite an expanded oath — now under the penalty of perjury — that states they did not “pressure or coerce” the voter into picking them for assistance.
The oath no longer allows explicitly answering the voter’s questions. Instead, an assistant must pledge to limit their assistance to “reading the ballot to the voter, directing the voter to read the ballot, marking the voter’s ballot, or directing the voter to mark the ballot.”
The limits on assistance will hit particularly hard voters with limited English proficiency and those with disabilities, the lawsuit contends.
“There is a history of discrimination against voters with disabilities in Texas,” the lawsuit claims, noting estimates that 28% of Texans have conditions impairing their mobility, cognition or vision.
The suit also takes aim at SB 1’s new rules for mail-in voting. Texas traditionally has placed more limits on mail-in voting than other states. The legitimacy of mail-in ballots was largely determined by comparing signatures on applications and ballots.
SB 1 created new ID requirements. Voters who want to be mailed a ballot must provide their driver’s license number or, if they don’t have one, the last four digits of their Social Security number when they send in an application for one.
They then must provide the same numbers on the envelope used to return their completed ballot. Critics point out that many voters — particularly elderly applicants — may have their votes thrown out simply because they didn’t remember which ID number they used the first time, or have lost their ID card.
The law, set to take effect in time for the 2022 primary elections, already faced legal challenges generally argue it will disproportionately impact voters of colors and voters with disabilities. Those challenges, along with Thursday’s lawsuit, could delay its implementation.
Here’s where I shrug and say that I have no idea what the courts will make of this. I will also remind everyone that the Texas voter ID law specifically excluded mail voters from needing to provide ID because at the time more Republicans voted by mail, and they had no interest in inconveniencing their own voters. Now that Democrats also use mail ballots, that consideration no longer applies. The Chron, Reform Austin, and Daily Kos have more.