Resource: Mi Familia Vota v. Abbott I

In July 2020, Free Speech For People filed a lawsuit in federal court in Texas on behalf of Mi Familia Vota, the Texas NAACP, and individual Texas voters challenging Texas’s unsafe in-person election practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lawsuit alleged that the state’s refusal to apply the statewide mask mandate to polling places and other practices—including its limited curbside voting options, reliance on repeat-touch voting machines, insufficient number of polling places, limited and inaccessible early voting locations, and stringent voter identification requirements—would result in unsafe voting conditions and increased risk of coronavirus transmission. The health risks and adverse impact of these policies placed an undue burden on the right to vote and were borne disproportionately by voters of color, in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.