Case Background

In December 2017, Judicial Watch, Election Integrity Project, and several voters registered in Los Angeles County filed a lawsuit in the Central District of California alleging that Los Angeles County was failing to remove enough inactive voters from the voting rolls, claiming a violation of Section 8 of the NVRA. Using misleading statistics, they sought a court order that would require the government to more aggressively purge their voter rolls.

Represented by Demos, three nonpartisan voter engagement organizations—Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, Rock the Vote, and the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles (“Proposed Defendant-Intervenors”)—filed a motion to intervene on the side of the Defendants, Dean Logan, the Registrar for Los Angeles County, and Alex Padilla, the California Secretary of State. Proposed Defendant-Intervenors register thousands of voters in Los Angeles County and across the state each year, focusing their efforts on communities that face the largest barriers to voter registration, including young, low-income, Latino, and African American voters. They sought to intervene in the lawsuit in order to prevent roll-maintenance practices from being adopted that would result in the removal of qualified voters, and to protect the right to vote of both their members and the individuals that they register.

In June 2018, the federal district court denied Proposed Defendant-Intervenors’ motion to intervene and defend against Plaintiffs' lawsuit. The denial of intervention was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and expedited review was requested. The Ninth Circuit denied the motion to expedite, and the parties proceeded to brief the appeal on the merits.

In January 2019, the Plaintiffs and the state and county defendants announced that they had reached a settlement agreement, and the Plaintiffs' case was dismissed. Demos subsequently filed a motion to vacate the District Court's order denying intervention because the case has become moot on appeal, thus preventing the Court of Appeals from considering the merits of the appeal.

Clients

Rock the Vote, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, League of Women Voters of Arizona

Co-counsel

Dechert LLP