On July 24, 2025, the Supreme Court temporarily paused a ruling from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that would have ended the ability of voters in the seven states covered by that Circuit to go to court to challenge racially discriminatory voting practices under the Voting Rights Act.
The Brennan Center and co-counsel filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of civil rights and voting organizations challenging President Trump’s March 2025 executive order on elections.
The Brennan Center, along with co-counsel O’Melveny & Myers, filed an amicus brief on behalf of itself and Professor Robert F. Williams in a case challenging the state’s congressional map as a partisan gerrymander under state law. The brief argues that South Carolina’s constitution offers greater protection from partisan gerrymandering than the federal constitution does, and that the South Carolina Supreme Court should find that its state constitution limits intentional manipulation of the electoral process to exclude disfavored voters from particular districts. On September 17, 2025, the Court held that partisan gerrymander claims are nonjusticiable political questions under South Carolina’s constitution.
The Brennan Center filed an amicus brief with prominent election law scholars urging the en banc D.C. Circuit to reverse its erroneous precedents limiting judicial review of FEC enforcement decision.
A federal court in Pennsylvania considered a challenge to the state’s process for determining the eligibility of overseas citizens to vote. On behalf of nonpartisan organizations and individual overseas voters, the Brennan Center and co-counsel O’Melveny and Myers LLP and Myers, Brier and Kelly LLP filed a friend-of-the-court brief to show how that challenge could disenfranchise military and overseas voters — and conflict with decades of efforts to ensure such voters can exercise their fundamental right to vote.
The Brennan Center filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the Washington Constitution provides stronger protections for voters than the federal constitution. The brief asks the Washington Supreme Court not to interpret Washington’s Free and Equal Elections Clause in lockstep with the federal Equal Protection Clause and instead apply strict scrutiny to laws that burden voters. On March 6, 2025, the Washington Supreme Court held that Washington’s signature verification system does not violate Washington’s Constitution.
Campaign Legal Center, the Environmental Law & Policy Center, and the Brennan Center filed an amicus brief urging the Sixth Circuit to reject former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder’s argument that accepting bribes is protected under the First Amendment.
A local official is asking a Georgia court to overhaul centuries-old law to allow local officials to refuse to certify election results. The Brennan Center, along with cocounsel from Protect Democracy, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Krevolin & Horst, LLC, filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of civil rights organizations supporting the defendants’ motion to dismiss.
The Brennan Center and cocounsel filed an amicus brief in an Arizona lawsuit seeking a more aggressive purge of the state’s voter rolls. The district court has now dismissed the case.
The Eleventh Circuit is set to hear a case that asks it to rewrite Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by requiring plaintiffs to show that race alone accounts for polarization in the electorate—an impossible-to-satisfy requirement that would reorient the law from its proper focus on discriminatory results to the subjective intent of voters. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger filed this appeal after Black voters and organizations successfully challenged the state’s new congressional and legislative maps. The Brennan Center and co-counsel Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP filed an amicus brief supporting plaintiffs-appellees.