While the political battle over election integrity and reform continues to rage in Georgia, so too does the judicial battle. For example, the Judicial Watch organization filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s Justice Department for records of communications between it and various leftist organizations and individuals concerning the DOJ’s decision to challenge Georgia’s election integrity law (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:21-cv-02427)).
Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit recently in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Biden Justice Department failed to respond to a July FOIA request to the Justice Department’s Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division for the following records:
All documents and communications between (1) the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, or any of their officers, employees, members, agents, or affiliates, and (2) any of the following people and organizations, including any of their officers, members, agents, parent organizations, affiliated entities, branches, subordinate organizations, or chapters, concerning the U.S. Department of Justice’s Voting Rights Act Section 2 lawsuit against the State of Georgia, et al., in the Northern District of Georgia, Civ. No. 21-2575: ACLU Foundation of Georgia, American Civil Liberties Union, League of Women Voters, Brennan Center for Justice, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Common Cause, NAACP, Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, Campaign Legal Center, Fair Fight, Fair Fight Action, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams, Perkins Coie LLP, Marc Elias.
As Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton explains, the Justice Department’s lawsuit challenging Georgia’s election law asks the court to strike down major parts of the act, including strengthened voter ID requirements for voting by mail.
“The leftists who control the Justice Department have a long record of working hand in glove with extremist and partisan interest groups who oppose any efforts to make it harder to steal votes and elections,” Fitton notes.
Interestingly, a week after the DOJ filed its lawsuit against Georgia, on July 1 of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld two Arizona voting provisions that Democrats and leftist groups had challenged as “disproportionately burdening” minority voters. Fitton reports in an email that his group and the Allied Educational Foundation filed amici curiae (friends of the court) briefs in support of Arizona’s law.
“The (Supreme Court’s) decision is what I called a knockout blow to the Left’s tsunami of harassing lawsuits challenging virtually any effort by any state to modestly increase the security of elections and minimize the impact of voter fraud,” Fitton says. And that’s good news for Georgia and its new election integrity law since, as in Arizona, the political Left has also tried to undermine such reforms as the voter ID stipulation.
