Florida has arrested and prosecuted many returning citizens—persons with felony convictions who are no longer incarcerated—for registering and voting while ineligible. These prosecutions have occurred amid widespread confusion about voting rights restoration in Florida and have been initiated by an Office of Statewide Prosecutor (“OSP”) that has no authority to bring these criminal actions.

Mississippi is home to one of the strictest felon disenfranchisement schemes in the nation. The Mississippi Constitution permanently disenfranchises citizens upon a single felony conviction for certain crimes, including minor offenses like writing a bad check. As a result, the loss of rights under Mississippi’s scheme is mandatory, permanent, and effectively irrevocable. In Hopkins, plaintiffs, a class of formerly incarcerated individuals who lost their right to vote despite completing their sentences, argued that their disenfranchisement violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor and struck down Mississippi’s disenfranchisement scheme as cruel and unusual punishment. But the Fifth Circuit decided to rehear the case en banc, a rare occurrence in which a case is reconsidered by the entire panel of the circuit’s active judges.

This case involved a state constitutional challenge to New Hampshire’s 2022 statewide Executive Council redistricting plan, which bore the hallmarks of a stark partisan gerrymander. The ACLU and the ACLU of New Hampshire filed an amicus brief in support of a challenge to the map in the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Ohio, and Covington & Burling LLP filed a lawsuit on Sept. 23, 2021, in Ohio Supreme Court challenging Ohio’s newly drawn maps for state House and Senate districts that give extreme and unfair advantage to the Republican Party.