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In 2020, in a nearly unanimous bipartisan vote, Mississippi joined eighteen other states in accepting mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrived after Election Day (in Mississippi鈥檚 case, up to five business days). This lawsuit by partisan actors seeks to disenfranchise these voters whose ballot is mailed by Election Day but鈥攖hrough no fault of their own鈥攄oes not arrive until afterwards. In Mississippi, this harm will fall disproportionately on voters with disabilities, older voters, and other communities that rely upon absentee voting. Twisting the words and meaning of Congress, the RNC argues that three longstanding federal laws that set a uniform election day for federal races require that ballot may only be counted if they are received by election officials by Election Day. If accepted, this radical argument would not only disenfranchise thousands upon thousands of voters in Mississippi and eighteen other states, but also upend election administration in every state.

A law passed in 2023 significantly diminishes access to the ballot for Mississippians with disabilities by restricting who may return an absentee ballot for a voter to only a narrow category of assistors. We鈥檙e suing to block this law.

District lines used to elect Mississippi鈥檚 Supreme Court have gone unchanged for more than 35 years. We鈥檙e suing because this dilutes the voting strength of Black residents in state Supreme Court elections, in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.

In Galloway v. Mississippi, the ACLU represents a man on Mississippi鈥檚 death row whose trial attorneys relied on a mere twenty-two-page presentation in support of a life sentence, without first conducting the background investigation that would have enabled them to make informed decisions about what evidence to present. A constitutionally adequate investigation would have uncovered voluminous mitigating evidence that could have caused the jury to decide for life instead of death. The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected Mr. Galloway鈥檚 claim by speculating that trial counsel had an alternative 鈥渟trategy鈥� that precluded their doing a full presentation of the abuse he suffered as a child and his mental disabilities鈥攅ven though Mr. Galloway鈥檚 lawyers asserted no such strategic judgment.