President Donald Trump gestures during a campaign rally on October 18, 2020 in Carson City, Nevada.
Donald Trump and the Republican party have secured the dismissal of part of a lawsuit accusing them of plotting to disenfranchise Black voters in connection with the 2020 presidential election, a federal judge has ruled. The judge did not immediately disclose his reasoning, and he withheld ruling on the remainder of the lawsuit, which for now survives partially intact. Trump and the RNC lost a separate motion to transfer the remaining litigation away from the Democratic stronghold jurisdiction of Washington, D.C.
Originally filed by the Detroit-based Michigan Welfare Rights Organization in November 2020, the lawsuit initially targeted Trump and his campaign for a single alleged violation of the Voting Rights Act. A month later, an amended complaint added the Republican National Committee as a defendant and an eye-opening top count: alleged violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act. More plaintiffs also signed onto the legal action, including the NAACP and three Black voters from the Detroit: Maureen Taylor, Nicole L. Hill and Teasha K. Jones.
The lawsuit noted that Trump and the Republican party directed their election-subversion efforts in places with large numbers of people of color.
“Under the specter of preventing ‘fraud,’ defendants engaged in a conspiracy, executed through a coordinated effort, to disenfranchise voters by disrupting vote counting efforts, lodging groundless challenges during recounts, and attempting to block certification of election results through intimidation and coercion of election officials and volunteers,” the amended complaint states. “These systematic efforts – violations of the VRA and the Ku Klux Klan Act – have largely been directed at major metropolitan areas with large Black voter populations. These include Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and others. Defendants have not directed these efforts at predominantly white areas.”
On Thursday, Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in a single-page order that Trump and the Republican party could not transfer the venue, a gambit that the civil rights groups described as forum shopping. The same order indicates that Sullivan will dismiss part of the lawsuit against the defendants and withhold ruling on another part of the complaint.
Sullivan promised to explain his reasoning in a “forthcoming” opinion.
Until it is released, Sullivan’s threadbare order reads in its entirety as follows:
For the reasons stated in the Court’s forthcoming Memorandum Opinion, it is hereby
ORDERED that the RNC’s Motion to Transfer, ECF No. 21, is DENIED; and it is further
ORDERED that the Trump Defendants’ Motion to Transfer, ECF No. 22, is DENIED; and it is further
ORDERED that the RNC’s Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 24, is GRANTED IN PART AND HELD IN ABEYANCE IN PART; and it is further
ORDERED that the Trump Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 25, is GRANTED IN PART AND HELD IN ABEYANCE IN PART.
The civil rights groups’ lawsuit is not the only one accusing Trump of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law originally designed to punish conspiracies to interfere with the civil rights of formerly enslaved people by white supremacist and vigilante groups. In February, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta advanced parts of three lawsuits against Trump, including allegations under the KKK Act.
Lawyers for Trump, the RNC, and the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization did not respond to Law&Crime’s press inquiries.
Read the judge’s order below:
(image via Stephen Lam/Getty Images)
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