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WASHINGTON – U.S. Supreme Court arguments in the Ohio voting purge case, Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, have been rescheduled for Jan. 10, 2018. Paul M. Smith, vice president of litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center, will argue the case on behalf of the plaintiffs.

Improving transit access to jobs can be a key tool in closing that gap, according a new report from Algernon Austin at Demos, because people of color are more likely than white people to rely on transit to get to work.

Demos, a liberal think tank, and the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University found African Americans are far more likely to have student debt, regardless of income. Black families, after decades of being shut out of traditional ladders of economic opportunity, have the fewest resources to cover the costs of college or to protect against the risk of borrowing.

New York, NY – After Richard Cordray announced that he would be resigning from his role as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Tamara Draut, Vice President of Policy and Research at Demos and Demos Action, released the following statement:

Underfunding Public Transit Disproportionally Hurts African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans 

Last year, Americans took over 10 billion trips on public transportation. These were trips to work, to school, to stores, to health care, to places of worship, and elsewhere. For millions of Americans, their quality of life rests on the quality of public transit.

LONG WAY HOME: According to a new report by the public policy organization Demos, African American workers are three times as likely as white workers not to have a car at home and they use transit four times more, which could be part of why some see transit as an issue of racial equity. The solution, Demos suggests, is to invest in infrastructure — improving transit and creating jobs for people who need them.

A 2013 survey by Demos, a public policy organization that combats inequality, showed that 10 percent of respondents who were unemployed had been informed that they would not be hired because of some facet of their credit history. The same survey indicated that 1 out of every 7 job applicants with “blemished credit histories” had been told they were not hired because of their credit history. [...]

PHOENIX – An investigation by voting rights groups revealed Arizona agencies are persistently violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which Congress enacted to increase opportunities to register to vote and simplify the registration process. The groups detailed their findings and demanded action in a formal notice letter sent today to Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan.