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 WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Georgia and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyers' Committee) filed a motion in a Washington, D.C. federal court to intervene in a challenge to the Voting Rights Act brought by the state of Georgia. The civil rights coalition is defending the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Act and challenging the state's flawed and racially discriminatory voter-registration practices.

Section 5 has protected racial and language minorities' access to voting across the South and the nation since 1965 and requires some states with a history of discrimination in voting procedures to submit new procedures for federal review before they are implemented.

"The many U.S. citizen minority voters in Georgia who were incorrectly flagged as non-citizens under the state's voter-verification procedures can attest to the fact that discrimination in voting continues and the need for Section 5 remains," said Laughlin McDonald of the ACLU Voting Rights Project.

The coalition filed the motion to intervene in the case, Georgia v. Holder, on behalf of the Georgia State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials; Coalition for the People's Agenda; Georgia State Rep. Tyrone Brooks; Edward Dubose, President of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP; and Helen Butler, Executive Director of the Coalition for the People's Agenda.

The state's questionable voter-registration procedures rely on error-ridden government databases for citizenship verification and require birth certificates and other documents as proof of citizenship that many people, especially students, minorities and the elderly cannot easily access.

Shortly before the last presidential election, the procedures in place at the time resulted in thousands of U.S. citizens being incorrectly flagged as non-citizens and subject to being denied the right to vote. A federal court in Georgia blocked the procedures in October 2008 pending Section 5 review after a coalition of voting rights groups, including the ACLU and Lawyers' Committee, challenged them in a lawsuit, Morales v. Handel.

In May 2009, the Department of Justice blocked the procedures that mandated the use of the flawed voter-verification databases after review under Section 5, citing their discriminatory impact on minority voters.

"Without Section 5's preclearance protections, there is no doubt that racial and language minorities in Georgia and other covered jurisdictions would be subject to new forms of discrimination in voting," said Robert A. Kengle, an attorney with the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers' Committee.

"These flawed procedures would burden or deny the right to vote to many thousands of eligible Georgia voters," said Chara Fisher Jackson, Legal Director of the ACLU of Georgia. "We are confident that the federal court in the District of Columbia will block Georgia's discriminatory election procedures and uphold the Voting Rights Act."

Attorneys on the case, Georgia v. Holder, include McDonald and Meredith Bell-Platts of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, Fisher Jackson of the ACLU of Georgia, Art Spitzer of the ACLU of the Nation's Capital, and Kengle, Jon Greenbaum and Mark A. Posner of the Lawyers' Committee.

 

To see the motion to join the intervention, Click Here

To see the letter about the case sparking Georgia's challenge, Click Here

   

 

    On June 22-26, 2010, the ACLU of Georgia participated in the second U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, Michigan, a gathering of tens of thousands of activists for social change from across the country. The Forum's diverse participants represented all age groups, backgrounds, and experience levels; and national, regional, and local organizations of all sizes convened to foreground issues such as police brutality, poverty alleviation, environmental crimes, solidarity with international resistance movements, labor and immigrants' rights, education reform, and a host of other issues.

    Participants shared organizing tactics and strategized on tactics to confront these inequalities. The first U.S. Social Forum was held in Atlanta, Georgia in 2007. 

    The ACLU of Georgia's Azadeh Shahshahani co-presented on three panels on racial profiling, immigrants' rights, and the use of the international human rights framework in domestic social justice struggles. 
 

    The panels were well-attended and sparked dialogue between representatives of other human rights organizations, students, grassroots organizers, social service workers, and local Detroit citizens.

Here is a summary of our workshops at the Social Forum:

Racial Profiling: It's Time to Face the Truth

  On June 23, 2010, the ACLU of Georgia presented this workshop along with the Rights Working Group, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and the Arab Community Center for Economic & Social Services. The workshop focused on the issues and ramifications of different forms of racial, religious, and ethnic profiling in the U.S. The workshop included discussions of the longstanding endemic racial profiling of African-Americans and Latinos in the U.S., as well as the post-9/11 profiling of Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian community members in the United States. The workshop recognized the experiences of diverse communities while working toward a sense of unity among participants, with the idea of working together to end profiling through federal legislative and administrative reform.

    The ACLU of Georgia presented its local work to combat racial profiling in Cobb and Gwinnett counties, including the documentation and reporting of racial profiling. Both counties currently participate in the 287(g) program, whereby federal immigration powers are delegated to local sheriffs' departments, resulting in rampant racial profiling and erosion of trust between the police and immigrant communities.

Immigration Detention 101
 
    On June 24, 2010, the ACLU of Georgia co-presented this workshop with the national Detention Watch Network. The workshop covered the crisis in the U.S. immigration detention system. Since 1994, the number of detention beds has grown from 5,000 to over 33,000 with more than 1.7 million individuals passing through the system since 2003.    

    The immigration detention system has rapidly expanded at the expense of universal human rights principles and the rule of law. The workshop discussed the manner in which this expanded immigration detention system feeds into the prison-industrial complex, with many immigration detention facilities being operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, a private corporation standing to profit from an increased number of immigrant detainees. The workshop went over basics of the immigration detention system, including who runs it, who makes decisions, and who ends up in detention, why, and for how long. 

     It also discussed the role of prisons and county jails in immigration detention and the expanding cooperation between criminal and immigration law enforcement agencies. The ACLU of Georgia discussed its visits and the visits of its coalition partners to local detention centers, including the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia-one of the largest immigration detention facilities in the United States. The ACLU of Georgia also reported on practices of Georgia immigration detention facilities and the human rights implications of these practices.  The ACLU of Georgia also participated in discussions surrounding humane alternatives to immigration detention.

Advancing Local Struggles Through Making Use of the International Human Rights Framework

    The ACLU of Georgia presented this workshop on June 25, 2010. The workshop included a presentation on various avenues available for domestic actors to make use of international human rights tools to advance their local social justice causes. Some of these avenues include: local implementation of international treaties that have not been ratified by the United States; calling on special rapparteurs to report on and investigate local human rights abuses; and filing petitions with international bodies and regional tribunals such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.  The workshop discussed examples of how the international human rights framework has been successfully used to fight for the dignity of immigrants, people of color, women, victims of torture, and youth targeted by abusive military recruiting practices. Examples were drawn from localities such as San Francisco and the ACLU of Georgia's own work. In continuation of the issues discussed during the panel, the ACLU of Georgia is now examining mechanisms by which to strengthen local human rights commissions in order to further local implementation of international human rights standards. 

   The ACLU of Georgia is proud to have participated in the Social Forum and looks forward to building on the insights and connections gained from the gathering.

1. Become an ACLU Ambassador. Receive breaking news and inside info

 

2.  Read up on Azadeh's blog

 

3.  Travel Alert for Arizona: Know Your Rights

 

4. ACLU Files Amici Brief in Georgia Supreme Court case concerning the right of defendants to have translators in court

 

5. "Terror and Isolation in Cobb":A report on racial profiling and separation of families in Cobb County as a result of the 287 (g) program.

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