Mi Familia Vota, the Texas NAACP, and an individual Texas voter won a motion to expedite their appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in the case challenging unsafe and unequal elections in Texas during the coronavirus pandemic. Free Speech For People, the law firm of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, and the law firm of Lyons & Lyons represent the plaintiffs in this case.

The motion comes after plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in July challenging a broad range of Texas’s voting practices as unsafe and unequal during the pandemic. The lawsuit alleges that the state’s reliance on repeat-touch voting machines, its insufficient number of polling places, its limited and inaccessible early voting locations, and its voter identification requirements will result in unsafe voting conditions and increased risk of coronavirus transmission – disproportionately harming voters of color.

On September 7, the district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case on political question grounds, which the plaintiffs are now appealing on an expedited schedule.

Free Speech For People, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, and Lyons & Lyons LLP represent the plaintiffs pro bono. The lawsuit has named Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs as defendants.

Read more about Mi Familia Vota vs Abbott here, and read our opening brief before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit here.