March 30, 2025 Story by: Publisher
Last month, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wrote to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi with a public request for the DOJ to drop its lawsuit against a 2021 overhaul of Georgia’s election laws, which Justice Department attorneys have argued was passed to restrict Black voters’ ballot access in violation of Section 2. Raffensperger’s office has not yet received a response, according to spokesperson Mike Hassinger.
Three days after the start of the second Trump administration, Noah Bokat-Lindell, a career DOJ attorney, appeared before a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a separate case over Georgia’s congressional and state legislative redistricting plans.
A press release from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger states:
“Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger made a formal request to the newly appointed Attorney General, The Honorable Pam Bondi, urging the Department of Justice to withdraw its lawsuit, U.S. v. Georgia. This litigation was filed by the Biden Administration contesting provisions of Senate Bill 202 (SB 202), a commonsense election reform measure that has strengthened election integrity and voter accessibility since implementation.
In his request, Secretary Raffensperger also urged the Department of Justice to consider filing statements of interest in support of Georgia’s election administration practices in related legal cases. Since SB 202 took effect, Georgia has seen measurable improvements, including reduced wait times at polling places, enhanced absentee ballot processes, and increased voter confidence across all demographics in the security and reliability of elections.
“The Biden Administration and Stacey Abrams created a false narrative regarding Georgia’s elections,” said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. “The DOJ should never be leveraged for political purposes, and I hope Attorney General Bondi will join us in ending this frivolous lawsuit against the state of Georgia, and release documents exposing the coordination between the Biden DOJ and the liberal left.”
Opponents of SB 202 previously called for economic boycotts against Georgia, most notably the relocation of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game following advocacy efforts led by Stacey Abrams. Despite these efforts, Georgia’s voting laws remain unchanged, and the 2025 MLB All-Star Game is set to return to Atlanta.”
During oral arguments, Bokat-Lindell defended the constitutionality of Section 2 — a position that GOP officials in states including Georgia and Louisiana have been opposing in multiple lawsuits — as well as the right of private individuals and groups to sue to enforce the law’s protections against racial discrimination in elections.
For decades, private challengers, who do not represent the U.S. government, have brought most of the lawsuits for enforcing Section 2.
But after Justice Neil Gorsuch released a one-paragraph opinion on the topic in 2021, Republican state officials have pushed a novel legal argument — that the Voting Rights Act does not allow private individuals and groups to bring Section 2 lawsuits. Voting rights advocates fear it’s a potential path for undermining Section 2, which they say is crucial after a 2013 Supreme Court ruling effectively dismantled requirements for certain states and counties with a history of racial discrimination to get “preclearance” approval from the Justice Department or a federal court before changing their election rules.
