AUSTIN, Texas _ Alleging that the state is discriminating against naturalized citizens and infringing on their voting rights, civil rights groups on Monday filed a third lawsuit against the Texas Secretary of State's office for instructing counties to investigate whether tens of thousands of noncitizens were voting using flawed data.
"The right to vote is sacrosanct. Yet, the Texas Secretary of State has engaged in a sloppy exercise that threatens to unfairly strip people of the opportunity to participate in American democracy," Andre Segura, legal director for the ACLU of Texas, said in a news release announcing the lawsuit. "Even after we told Texas officials that this would happen, they doubled down on this failed experiment and left us with no other recourse but to take this to court. We look forward to ensuring that all eligible Texas voters can make their voices heard on election day."
Last month, Secretary of State David Whitley sent out an advisory to Texas counties saying that there were 95,000 people on the voter rolls who had received their driver's license while they were not U.S. citizens. Of those, 58,000 had voted in one or more elections since 1996, Whitley said, and he asked counties to send them letters seeking a proof of citizenship to remain on the voter rolls.
Conservative lawmakers, including President Donald Trump and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, pointed to the advisory as evidence of voter fraud even though it had not proved any documented cases and was in fact asking counties to investigate. By Wednesday, at least 20,000 people had been removed from the list after the state told county officials they had been placed there in error and had already proved their citizenship.
The lawsuit was filed Monday on behalf of four nonprofits that are active in engaging people to vote: MOVE Texas Civic Fund, Jolt Initiative, League of Women Voters of Texas, and NAACP of Texas It asks a federal court to declare the secretary of state's actions unconstitutional and a violation of the Voting Rights Act. The complaint, which calls the state's advisory a voter "purge list," also asks the court to block all Texas counties from sending notices to individuals requiring them to prove their citizenship and to stop counties from removing any registered voter from the voter rolls based on a failure to respond to such letters.
The complaint, filed in the Southern District Court of Texas in Galveston, names Whitley and his elections division director, Keith Ingram, as defendants. It also names Cheryl Johnson, who acts as the voter registrar of Galveston County, as a defendant because her county sent letters asking people on their list from the state to verify their citizenship. The complaint also names the voter registrars for Blanco, Caldwell, Fayette and Washington counties, who also sent citizenship review letters, as defendants.
Whitley's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Counties like Galveston, sent out citizenship review notices on Monday, before the state told counties that some U.S. citizens were mistakenly placed on their lists.
Critics quickly pointed out that a person who received their driver's license while they were legal permanent residents or had a temporary visa could have received their citizenship in the 22-year time period the secretary of state's list covered. Critics said the secretary of state had not taken that into account and could therefore be placing additional burdens to legally registered voters who were naturalized citizens.
Civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers urged the secretary of state to rescind its advisory once the flaws in the data were revealed and pushed counties to hold off on taking action until it could be sorted out.
In Harris County, about 60 percent of the names on its initial list of about 30,000 people were removed by Wednesday. In Dallas County, 17 percent of the nearly 10,000 people on the list were removed after state officials revealed a flaw in their data.
"There is no question that Secretary Whitley released a flawed and inaccurate advisory that risks throwing thousands of eligible voters off the rolls," Beth Stevens, voting rights legal director for the Texas Civil Rights Project said in a news release. "Our lawsuit seeks to put the brakes on this voter suppression by rescinding the flawed advisory. Not one single eligible Texan should lose the right to vote because state officials have decided to pursue a radical anti-voter agenda."
The lawsuit alleges that the state is violating the equal protection clause of the Constitution because it creates an additional requirement for naturalized citizens to exercise their right to vote. It also alleges that the state is creating "arbitrary and disparate" treatment of citizens by not giving clear instructions to the counties on how to follow through on the state's advisory. Some counties are sending letters asking for proof of citizenship, while others are holding off on taking action, which disadvantages people in counties that are asking for citizenship reviews.
The civil rights groups also say that the process laid out by the secretary of state for wiping someone from the voter rolls does not follow due process and disproportionately impacts minorities, because naturalized citizens are more likely to have come from minority groups.
Over the weekend, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund sued the state similarly claiming that its advisory violated the voting rights of legally registered Texan voters who were naturalized citizens. The League of United Latin American Citizens filed the first suit against the state for its advisory last Tuesday.
