AUSTIN, Texas — The U.S. Department of Justice sued Texas in federal court Thursday to block several portions of the state's sweeping voting and elections law known as Senate Bill 1.
The challenged provisions — setting identification requirements for mail-in voting and limiting polling place help for voters with disabilities or those with limited English proficiency — "will disenfranchise eligible Texas citizens who seek to exercise their right to vote," the lawsuit argued.
"These vulnerable voters already confront barriers to the ballot box, and SB 1 will exacerbate the challenges they face in exercising their fundamental right to vote," the lawsuit said.
SB 1, signed into law by Abbott on Sept. 7, will take effect Dec. 2.
The Republican-drafted legislation was the focus of some of the most intensely partisan battles in the Legislature this year, prompting House Democrats to walk out on two occasions to break quorum and deny passage.
Republicans insisted SB 1's provisions were required to bolster confidence in election results, while Democrats said the bill was unnecessarily restrictive, setting burdens to voting that were inspired by lies that fraud led to Donald Trump's defeat in 2020.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Antonio, took issue with two sections of the bill:
—First, SB 1 requires those who provide help to voters with disabilities or limited understanding of English to sign an oath, under penalty of perjury, stating that the voter was eligible for assistance and that the helper did not answer questions from the voter or pressure the voter into seeking their help.
"SB 1 prohibits assistors 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," the lawsuit said.
—Second, the lawsuit challenged SB 1's requirement that voters provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number as identification.
The Texas law requires voting clerks to reject applications for a mail-in ballot that contain identification numbers that do not match what was provided on a voter application, sometimes years earlier.
The new law also requires the identification number on a mail-in ballot's envelope to match the number provided on a voter's registration.
"SB 1 will disenfranchise some eligible mail voters based on paperwork errors or omissions immaterial to their qualifications to vote," the lawsuit argued.
"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," it said.
The lawsuit seeks a court order invalidating the voter-assistant provision as a violation of the Voting Rights Act, which protects a voter's right to assistance "by reason of blindness, disability or inability to read or write."
The lawsuit, by the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, also seeks an order voiding the mail ballot identification requirement as a violation of the Civil Rights Act. The 1964 federal law prohibits actions that deny the right to vote "because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting," the lawsuit said.
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