Paul, Weiss Files Voting Rights Action in Florida

As reported in The New York Times, Associated Press and Miami Herald, Paul, Weiss filed suit on behalf of the NAACP and other voting rights advocates in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee on September 17 to strike down a Florida election law that threatens to disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible voters in the 2008 Presidential Election. The law denies new registrants the right to vote if the information on their registration forms does not exactly match the databases maintained by the motor vehicle department or the Social Security Administration. This practice has already been struck down by a federal judge in Washington State in 2006, in another voting rights case brought by Paul, Weiss with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. The faulty Florida registration system, it is alleged, has already resulted in delayed or denied registrations for at least 20,000 voters. This system will have an especially adverse impact on Latino voters whose maternal and paternal surnames are often recorded differently in different government databases. The plaintiffs in the action are the Florida branch of the NAACP, the Hatian-American Grassroots Coalition and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project. Paul, Weiss represents the plainitffs jointly with the Brennan Center, the Advancement Project, Project Vote and Greenberg Traurig. The Paul, Weiss team includes partner Bob Atkins, and associates Marcus Cave, Yael Fuchs, Jeremy Gladstone and Adam Skaggs.