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2.18_Voting Rights with Alexi Velez, RLAW '15
23 Plays4 years ago
Co-Dean Kim Mutcherson interviews Alexi Velez, 2015 James and Sharon Maida Post-Graduate Public Interest Fellow about her work on voting rights.
Learn more about the James and Sharon Maida Public Interest Fellowship Program.
The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige and reputation of a large, nationally-known university combined with a personal, small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.rutgers.edu.
Series Producer and Editor: Kate Bianco
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rutgerslaw/messageRecommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:10
Speaker
Hi, my name is Kim Mettreson, co-dean of Rutgers Law School in Camden, and this is the power of attorney. Today's episode is featuring our 2015 graduate, Alexei Velez, who is talking to me from her home in Washington, D.C., and I'm super excited. I know I say that every single time, but I really am super excited to have you here, and I'm really excited about our conversation. So thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me today.
00:00:39
Speaker
Thank you so much, Dean Mutterson. I'm really excited to be here. Excellent.
Alexei's Career Path to Law
00:00:43
Speaker
So where I usually like to start with these podcasts is asking our guests their origin story. What is it that led you to law school, given all the other things that you could have chosen to do with your life? Why did you decide to become a lawyer? That is a great question. And I definitely did not take the most direct path to get here. So this is really almost a third career for me.
00:01:08
Speaker
Started at state schools in New Jersey at Ramapo college and had every intention of working as an art teacher. I did that for a little while in New Jersey public schools, and it was a phenomenal experience. Unfortunately, because of school funding constraints, when I was laid off from that job in about, I would say 2009, I started thinking about other career paths because it was very difficult to find an art education position in the state at that time.
00:01:36
Speaker
I ended up getting a master's degree in cultural anthropology, thinking that I would probably pursue the terminal degree in that and get my PhD later. But while I was studying anthropology, I would do a lot of work that touched on civil rights and equal protection issues, dealing primarily with the Roma ethnic, sometimes called gypsy population in the United States and the way that they have been criminalized by law enforcement. Because it speaks to my personal family history, my father's Roma and
00:02:05
Speaker
It was something that was fascinating to me in South Florida in particular, where police departments will sometimes issue what they call gypsy crime alerts in certain seasons of the year, which just is, I mean, it is appalling to think that an ethnicity would be criminalized to that extent. Yeah. What does that even mean to say a gypsy crime alert?
00:02:27
Speaker
So in the South Florida context, when I investigated it a bit for my thesis, what it meant was different, you know, sort of small scale fraud schemes that were there that they were associating with Roma population coming down and the way they were characterized would be preying on older residents of certain South Florida communities.
00:02:45
Speaker
No concept of the fact that it would not be considered okay for a modern day police department to sort of say the quiet part out loud, even though proof happens, of course, for racial groups in particular and ethnic groups to say that they are targeting people in this way. But sort of in doing that, I thought, you know, is this work that I want to pursue in the anthropology context or is it something that I'd like to look at from a legal framework? I did not know any lawyers at all, you know, first generation college in my family.
Support and Experience at Rutgers Law
00:03:14
Speaker
Academia seemed smaller and less competitive in a different way. It felt more like my environment. I knew it a little bit better. Law school was terrifying. But I applied anyway and was so lucky to get accepted to Rutgers where, first of all, I think, you know, there are a lot of academics on the faculty and people that really just love to nerd out on legal issues and also are wildly passionate about civil rights work in particular, where, you know, I'm not sure I would have
00:03:41
Speaker
fit in at any law school, Rutgers Camden was exactly the right place for me to sort of bring both of those worlds together. Perfect. You know, one of the things that's been really interesting to me since we started doing the podcast, you know, usually as we identify alums who want to talk to you, it's sort of, you know, who's a person who graduated, who has an interesting story, or they're doing an interesting job now, or, and so many of those folks have been first gen
00:04:07
Speaker
students, either first gen college or first gen law school. And I think part of that is just a reflection of the fact that we educate a lot of students who are first generation. But I think another piece of it is that, and this is one of the things that I love about teaching at Rutgers Law, you can sort of see how people's life trajectories
00:04:27
Speaker
shift as a consequence of coming to law school. So it's always great to hear how people ended up in law school and then at Rutgers. And then the other thing that's also really great to hear is what was it like, right? I mean, you were sort of intimidated by the idea of coming to law school.
00:04:47
Speaker
So once you got here, was the experience what you were expecting? Were there aspects of it that were exactly one point and other aspects of it were really different? What was it like being a first gen law student at Rutgers? So the first thing that I'll say is sort of like you mentioned, I definitely was not the only one, which was really empowering. I think had I come to law school and everyone else
00:05:12
Speaker
had mom and dad both working in the legal profession. They were totally conversant in sort of the language of law that you have to learn your first year, especially if you've never been exposed to it. I think I would have been probably scared out and would have gone back to my anthro program that, you know, seemed a little bit more accessible for me. But there were a lot of other students that were sort of in my same position and a lot of students who had exposure through non-traditional route. So I had a lot of
00:05:41
Speaker
classmates that had worked as paralegals and they had excellent insight from having been exposed to the law in a different way than somebody who might be the child of a judge who also has an excellent insight to offer. But I had a lot of colleagues who were coming at law as a second career like I was. That was comforting as well. I was afraid that I was going to be the oldest student, even though my other careers had happened sort of quickly. I thought, I assumed that everyone might be 22, 23 years old and that wasn't the case.
00:06:10
Speaker
I don't know what I expected, honestly, to say that they were different than from what I expected. I think the issue was I had no idea really what to expect. So I moved up to Camden from Florida, where I was completing my master's program. So I didn't get to do Dean's Law Day orientation, which I was able to participate in as a student and was phenomenal and sort of gives folks a preview.
00:06:33
Speaker
of what it looks like. So I really didn't know what I was going to be getting myself involved in. So then when you came to campus, was it the first time that you were on the campus? Yes. Oh, wow. And in fact, the first time I set foot on any law school in campus because I had applied to things remotely. I hadn't applied to any law schools in Florida. Being a grad student with limited resources, I just didn't have the funds to travel and look at places other than sort of remotely and talk to people at a distance.
00:07:03
Speaker
So it was the first time I was ever on a law school campus was when I started. But I think the thing that made me feel really comfortable really fast is that I sort of knew that public interest was where I wanted to focus my energy. I knew that civil rights lawyering or direct legal services, sort of one or the other, were the types of things that I'd like to do, knowing what little I knew about them at that point. And I found my people really fast. So I think Dean Jill Friedman, Pam Mardsock-Wolf being so involved in APLE, and then
00:07:32
Speaker
older, you know, more senior students who were involved in the leadership that sort of took me in, helped me get involved in the April programming recommended classes that would be aligned with
00:07:44
Speaker
what my goals were as they were still developing, um, was enormously helpful. I sort of didn't feel as stranded in the woods as I might have otherwise. Yeah. And, and for those who are listening, April is the association of public interest law at the law school. And, and I, I really resonate with that experience. I went to law school to be a public interest lawyer as well. And it is, you know, it can be a sort of lonely experience, right? Because depending upon where you're in law school,
00:08:12
Speaker
There are lots of people who, you know, maybe spend their first summer doing public interest work or, you know, maybe do lots of promoter work, but that's not where they want to spend their careers. So having a community and having, you know, a lot of folks who are interested in the same thing, I think is an incredible kind of support that sometimes is really necessary to help you stay on that path. So when you got to law school,
00:08:37
Speaker
Usually first and second summer are those opportunities to if you're a law firm person, you end up going to a law firm. Some people spend time with a judge, but it's also an opportunity to start to get a sense of what kind of public interest work you want to do.
Public Interest Law and Early Career Work
00:08:52
Speaker
So what kinds of things were you able to do in law school to give you a sense of who you wanted to be as a lawyer? That is an excellent question. And I think summer internships are really tricky maybe for first generation folks and folks that are not as plugged in.
00:09:07
Speaker
then they might be for folks that already have a connection or we have an attorney that can sort of show them the way. I was really lucky. Rutgers has a phenomenal relationship with the New Jersey Attorney General's office. My 1L summer, I was able to work there in the labor and employment group and do really interesting work, actually. I was working under a deputy attorney general named Nicole Colon.
00:09:30
Speaker
who represented the Department of Corrections and administrative hearings against corrections officers who had abused inmates and seeking some sort of sanctions against them. Really important work for really forgotten New Jerseyans who were experiencing
00:09:50
Speaker
unfortunate things and to know that she was an advocate employed by the state to make sure that folks who are incarcerated are not also being subject to physical abuse and really unfortunate things was illuminating work. It was important work. I didn't expect at that point the government was going to be my end game, but in terms of government work, that sort of oversight that's so important and that you don't often think about, especially when you're not well versed in the law,
00:10:18
Speaker
was an excellent experience for me. And Nicole also was a fantastic attorney. So I learned a lot just getting to work side by side with a lawyer every day. And then my second summer, I was with the Philadelphia Farm Workers Project, and we were doing outreach to farm workers throughout the state of Pennsylvania, actually. So I misspoke, it was Philadelphia Legal Assistance, but we were doing Pennsylvania farm worker outreach statewide. So we got to have an excellent, I think two week experience where
00:10:46
Speaker
We drove around the state. We did outreach to folks where they were working and where they were living, helping with not just immigration issues, but sort of any legal issues that might arise for folks. Because we were funded by Legal Services Corporation, we weren't allowed to do all of the immigration work that we might have otherwise done. But my friends and farm workers in Philadelphia actually partnered with us on a lot of these projects. And what was sort of lovely about the two public interest groups is that where one were
00:11:15
Speaker
One's work stopped, the other could sort of begin, and we were able to cover the needs of the community sort of partnering together, which was really excellent as well.
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that people don't always think about farm workers in Pennsylvania or they don't think about farm workers in New Jersey, right? We have this sort of vision of where those folks would be. And what was, I mean, obviously immigration issues for folks who were undocumented, but I assume that there were also issues about wages and hours and just all of that kind of stuff. Is that right?
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah, definitely lots of wage theft issues. We were also working with folks who would work at non-traditional agriculture jobs like mushroom grow houses, for example, in the West Chester area of Pennsylvania, where that industry is really large. And employment discrimination issues would come up. Pregnancy discrimination in particular, I remember that we had a client who needed support in that regard.
00:12:10
Speaker
So really any sort of civil litigation that you could imagine were things that we would try to either resolve ourselves or connect folks with other public interest lawyers who could help them on. That's great. One of the things that I always say to students is that law school is an opportunity to put yourself into a bunch of different work positions.
00:12:29
Speaker
and figure out, you know, this is the type of, this kind of office feels good to me, this kind of work feels good to me. And just as important to figure out, this kind of work doesn't feel good to me, this kind of office doesn't feel good to me. And it feels like the two summer experiences you had were in really different types of environments. So having had those two experiences, did you sort of identify, all right, now I kind of know where I want to be.
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, I, you know, my second summer sort of resonated with me in a different way because my client was, you know, as opposed to the Department of Corrections or New Jersey agency, I was working with people that needed my help and were vulnerable in a different way and really needed access to a lawyer and didn't have, you know, sort of the benefit of having built an attorney because of their status as an agency.
Challenges and Successes in Public Interest Law
00:13:21
Speaker
So I think recognizing,
00:13:24
Speaker
You know, that people have problems that need lawyers all the time. And when folks have, you know, circumstances of their life or their employment that make it impossible for them even to travel to an attorney, you know, and any number of other hardships that make it impossible to hire a private attorney or to communicate with, you know, an attorney that's not bilingual. All of these things are, you know, you recognize them in a different way by going to meet people where they are. And that work felt so powerful.
00:13:51
Speaker
And I really, really loved it. So I knew that sort of either direct services or impact litigation that was really client-facing was something that I wanted to do. Got it. And for those people who are listening who don't know what the term impact litigation means, what does it mean when we talk about doing impact litigation?
00:14:10
Speaker
So the impact litigation that I have done has all been pushing on the edges of constitutional protections and creating lawsuits that sort of change the legal landscape in favor of civil rights to protect sort of a wider area of rights or to better define the rights that the Constitution already protects. Perfect.
00:14:31
Speaker
So you'd have these two summer experiences. You sort of identified, okay, I think I feel like I know what kind of work I want to do. And one of the things that is often different about the experience of being somebody who's interested in public interest law is that you have a different sort of path to postgraduate employment. So, you know, you head into your third year, you're going to graduate, and you ended up applying for our META, our postgraduate META fellowship.
00:14:57
Speaker
Can you just tell folks what that is, what that program is? Sure. So the MATA program is a fantastic program funded by Mr. and Mrs. MATA that allows students interested in public interest to either participate in summer employment in the public interest or, or in addition, postgraduate employment for a full year in the public interest, paying the entire salary of that attorney so that the public interest nonprofit organization that often can't afford another attorney
00:15:26
Speaker
but could greatly benefit from the resources of having another attorney can partner with Rutgers, can partner with the META program and offer services in that way. Yeah. And public interest fellowships, I got a public interest fellowship when I graduated from law school and deeply, deeply appreciated it. And one of the things that's great about it is, as you say, it allows organizations to hire a new lawyer, a young lawyer frequently, who they wouldn't have been able to hire otherwise. So it's good for the organization, but it's also good for the
00:15:56
Speaker
you know, recent law school graduate who gets this opportunity to launch a career in public interest law. So what was the organization that sponsored you? So, so one thing I'd love to add Dean Mutterson to is that I was a recipient of the made a fellowship the second year that it was there, I believe, but the first year after law school, I applied to a number of public interest fellowships that were either national or
00:16:21
Speaker
regional and I did not receive any funding even though I had an amazing project. I had partnered with the Mizoni Center and an attorney there working on an expungement project primarily aiming to help folks engaged in street economies really with minor offenses on their record, particular focus on trans women in Philadelphia. And I think the project was excellent. I think it was
00:16:48
Speaker
a little early to get some of these corporate funders to focus on not only the rights of trans folks, but then the secondary issue of folks that may have engaged in sex work and the stigma around sex work that persists. So it was hard to get funding for that project. And I do think that as fantastic as all of these national programs are, you know, there's elitism in the public interest sector, just like there is in the private sector.
00:17:16
Speaker
And oftentimes the folks that get selected for those programs, you know, have the benefit of coming from maybe one of the top 10 law schools in the country. And it is sometimes hard to find space to do this incredible work from Rutgers, to have a carve out that guarantees Rutgers students the opportunity to do this impactful work is really amazing. So when I came out of the second time, I'll admit I was a little bit defeated. I put my blood, sweat and tears into this original
00:17:45
Speaker
project, Mizoni Center gave me so much time in helping me with my applications and contributing their portion of all of these applications, talking about where I would sit and how they would fund my benefits and things like that. So it was no small ask. When I applied for META, I worked with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, and the project was very different. So the project that I proposed for my META fellowship
00:18:10
Speaker
was to do sort of a two pronged project looking at both a policy side and a litigation side of the problem of debtors' prisons, which I think a lot of folks think do not exist in New Jersey. But the fact of the matter is, in New Jersey, like a number of other places, if you're unable to pay municipal court debt, and that includes things like traffic tickets or for folks that are living unsheltered, it might be tickets for loitering and staying outside, urinating outside,
00:18:38
Speaker
things that are sort of unavoidable because of the circumstances that they are living in that result in monetary fees. And when those fees don't get paid, they result in jail time. And it was an even bigger problem in New Jersey, I will say, at the time that my project was proposed through that fellowship, which I was awarded and was so lucky that James and Sharon made a, you know, funded, funded that project, selected that project, then I was able to do this work. We had an impact case.
00:19:05
Speaker
in New Jersey on behalf of a young man named Anthony Neisser who had a littering ticket. It was a fee of, I think, $230. He was unable to pay the fee that day. The judge told him, figure it out or go to jail. He ended up sitting in jail until he was able and fortunate enough to be able to call his father to deliver a check to the county jail and have him released. It is very hard to sue a judge anywhere in the United States federal court. There is a doctrine.
00:19:34
Speaker
you know, not to get too in the weeds, but it's called absolute judicial immunity for a reason, because we are insulated even more than police officers or law enforcement from civil rights litigation. But we were able to show that there was a policy and practice in this particular municipal court of this judge basically locking people up if they couldn't make a payment immediately. And it violated the United States Constitution and we were able to get
00:19:58
Speaker
a victory on summary judgment there. So before going to trial, basically, but after taking all of our depositions and looking at all the documents, one of them being a sign that was hung in the cashier's office of this particular municipal court, which I think was kind of the smoking gun of our, our evidence in this case that it said pay $200 minimum, or you don't leave. So again, you know, being so brazen with what, what I think a lot of municipal courts probably do, they have
00:20:28
Speaker
Unspoken policies to this effect, you know, having the paper sign that was posted and getting a lot of testimony from folks that worked for the court about this policy really helped us overcome that what would have been otherwise impossible hurdle of judicial immunity. So that case was really amazing. Be a baby lawyer. You know, I had one year of a clerkship with Judge Leon in the New Jersey appellate division, which was amazing and academic. And I learned so much and I improved so much as a writer because
00:20:58
Speaker
of his mentorship, but my first real case would be a case that was really, you know, I think everyone bought a loser to be such an important case in New Jersey and to inspire a lot of change after the fact. So my policy work was to write a report around sort of debt collection practices and the criminalization of poverty that we see in sort of municipal courts in general, but also the way that it looked in New Jersey.
00:21:24
Speaker
And I think as a result of that work and also as a result of the damages that we settled for and resolved the Nyser v. McInerney case for New Jersey's excellent Supreme Court and judiciary took note of some of the unnoticed issues that were going on in all of the municipal court throughout the state.
00:21:45
Speaker
Gosh, I can't remember. I think New Jersey might have, you know, something like 500 municipalities. The number of municipal courts anyway. There are so many municipal courts with the judges often serving part-time and covering three, four, five different municipalities. So if you have a problem in one, it becomes a really pervasive issue. But the Supreme Court got involved, issued some guidance. And my hope is that, you know, the experience for people who struggle to pay financial obligations in New Jersey municipal courts is a little bit better.
00:22:14
Speaker
as a result of that fellowship and would not have happened but for Rutgers and James and Sharon made his funding of that program. So one piece of your project was just focusing on that sort of predatory way. Sometimes our municipal courts deal with people who are poor, people
00:22:35
Speaker
who are low income, but the other piece of it that I also think is really interesting is that there isn't necessarily a great deal of oversight of judges, right? And so, you know, you can have judges in particular courts, I think of family courts as well.
00:22:52
Speaker
who are running their own little fiefdoms and nobody's watching what's going on. So what a great opportunity that you created for the state to really take responsibility for what was going on in these municipal courts. So what a great opportunity and what a great project for you and a great project for the ACLU. So that's a pretty amazing start.
00:23:16
Speaker
to a legal career. So after you had done that work, what were you kind of thinking about? What were you thinking about in terms of next steps? So the fantastic thing, there were so many fantastic things about working for the ACLU of New Jersey. One of many things that they did to help me on my career was that they kept me on as a staff attorney because funding was limited.
00:23:40
Speaker
It was never sort of a guaranteed position forever. I think we were doing six months stints while I was a staff attorney sort of continuing on as funding was available. But that is not an, or not an opportunity rather that most junior attorneys get. Typically the ACLU of New Jersey, because it's small and funding is so limited, only would hire lateral attorneys with a lot of experience coming from, you know, public interest or public defender's office to come and do the,
00:24:08
Speaker
the
Transition to Perkins Coie and Civil Rights Focus
00:24:09
Speaker
litigation that we did, especially because so much of our practice was amicus work at the appellate level, either in state or federal court, seasoned litigators make sense in those roles. But it's also fantastic to have mentorship for junior attorneys to sort of get the opportunities to argue before the New Jersey Appellate Division and the New Jersey Supreme Court. Both opportunities that I had, both as a fellow and as a staff attorney at ACLU New Jersey, which are really kind of unheard of.
00:24:37
Speaker
I probably would have stayed there for as long as they would have me. The reason that I started looking elsewhere was really just for more job security. Sort of the anxiety of working in public interest and not necessarily having an enormous safety net outside of work to carry you if you do lose a position kind of added a lot to myself and my late husband Jim's anxiety about how we were going to pay the bills if things ever stopped working out.
00:25:06
Speaker
In a way, the ACLU was doing really well. People were recognizing the need of civil liberties litigation in the Trump era, probably more than ever. And there was more job security than there might have been under the Obama administration, where there was still plenty of civil rights work to do, especially at the state level, but at the federal level as well. But the funding was not as robust at that time.
00:25:34
Speaker
Um, I was looking for other jobs with the full support of my mentors at the ACLU and really, um, their coaching and guidance and help. And I was thinking that, uh, probably, uh, national as opposed to regional civil rights litigation is something that I would be really interested in. So I was looking at DC partially because my, my law license would, I would be able to wave in there and be able to practice in DC more easily than I would as a more junior attorney in New York. Um, where I think there's also, you know, a national
00:26:04
Speaker
public interest legal market. So DC was a focus and I really was thinking, you know, either the national office of the ACLU or Planned Parenthood or, you know, some nationwide nonprofit that has a really well-known impact litigation shop, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, you know, all of these places that would be amazing to work, not really thinking that private law firms would have openings for me.
00:26:31
Speaker
Uh, but in looking for civil rights litigator positions, um, this Perkins Cooey job appeared to me and I thought, my goodness, there is about zero chance, um, that this law firm is going to be looking for someone with a hippie to be background who does not know how to build her time. Um, probably therefore not profitable to come in as a lateral associate in any of their departments, but they said they were looking for a junior civil rights litigator.
00:27:00
Speaker
And I thought that's me, so I might as well try. And I applied for the job knowing that Perkins Cooley's political law department was a little bit unique among sort of big law practices. So doing a lot of work to challenge racial gerrymanders in particular, and bringing a lot of voting rights litigation at a nationwide level, challenging voter suppression laws really anywhere that they might arise.
00:27:27
Speaker
At that time, the political law litigation practice was very small. I think maybe there were five or six attorneys since I've been there in the last three years. We're now at nearly 20. We've grown a whole lot and through that have been able to do even more work. But sort of looking at this job, I thought, okay, maybe they're definitely weirdos and outliers in terms of what a political law or in terms of what a private law practice might be.
00:27:53
Speaker
I might as well try. And I had probably the most unusual interview of my life. I think at the end of it, one of the partners and I gave each other a hug, Liz Frost, who has been a mentor to me since I've been there. You know, we talked about the fact that of the attorneys that were already there at that time, a lot of them came from either DOJ civil rights, voting rights focused practices, or public interest, and that it really wasn't so unusual.
00:28:20
Speaker
to join them from, you know, with a background like mine. And I think the interview went really, really well, but I almost didn't take the job in any event. What had happened was I interviewed with them, I think, on the 16th of February, and then unexpectedly on the 20th of February, my husband passed away suddenly. You know, sort of the world fell apart. And I thought, for as interesting as this opportunity might be, there's just no way I can move right now and sort of do
00:28:49
Speaker
do anything else. I felt really frozen for a minute. And I needed to grieve and not think about it. And actually the night that Jim passed away, I responded to the HR person at Perkins Coie and said, sorry, I'm out. They had emailed me that day asking if I wanted to speak to Mark Elias, my boss, who's kind of a big deal in the voting rights world. And I said, no, you know, my husband died and I can't. They were really lovely. They made a donation to Rock to the Future, a charity that
00:29:17
Speaker
helps young folks who might not have access, get access to music lessons in Philadelphia in Jim's name. And just really were kind to me. And that partner who hugged me, she reached out to me on a number of occasions really to say, you know, this has never happened before, but we care about you already, you know, and we want to know that you're okay. And certainly no pressure to come back to this job. But in a couple of years, if you decide that Perkins Coie political law is a place that you'd like to practice, you know,
00:29:46
Speaker
would love to revisit this conversation. And at that point, I thought, you know, I had a lot of energy and that I didn't sort of have an outlet for. And I felt a little lost. The ACLU was amazing. I mean, to just sort of plug the family that you get in a nonprofit setting that doesn't exist in a law firm. They delivered meals to my family home for weeks and weeks, really until I moved to DC. I mean, it was
00:30:13
Speaker
never ending. My colleagues were going home from work, cooking homemade meals, and then driving 45 minutes to my parents' home and delivering them to me constantly and visiting me. And the executive director and the legal director came and sat with me for hours. People came to services for my husband. I mean, the ACLU of New Jersey, if you ever get the chance to work there, I mean, that is just the most amazing group of people I've ever had the pleasure of working alongside.
00:30:41
Speaker
You know, I knew I needed a new challenge and I knew I needed new focus. And I knew that Donald Trump's presidency to be quite candid was something that needed my attention and that made me feel particularly driven to do voting rights work. And I thought that I could honor Jim and I could
00:31:00
Speaker
do powerful work and feel empowered again. There's nothing like a sudden loss to make you feel helpless and recognize how fragile it all is. But there was something empowering about going and fighting Republican-backed legislation in these states that were really focused on challenging and suppressing the right of young folks, folks of color, folks living at or below the poverty line to access the ballot box.
00:31:27
Speaker
Um, and we did great work. We did, you know, my first few months that I was there, we challenged a prohibition by the Florida secretary of state against allowing on campus early voting, even though there was nothing in the statute that prohibited it. And, you know, of course it was so plain to us that there's no other reason, uh, to make it harder for first time voters to cast their ballots then to really, you know, to keep them silenced. And we had a phenomenal.
00:31:54
Speaker
result there, getting a preliminary injunction in 2018 in that election, almost 70,000 young voters passed their ballots on campus polling places. It could not have happened otherwise. And just really, you know, an incredible result. I got to work with young folks like our plaintiffs, Megan Newsom, Dylan Boatner, so many others, but really first time voters that sort of came into the game caring so much and willing to give their time and energy to
00:32:22
Speaker
intimidating federal litigation to make sure that they, you know, sort of spoke truth to power and told the Secretary of State that they weren't going to take this lying down. And it was exactly what I needed to remember that, you know, I can still make an impact that there are still great things that can happen despite tragedy and to really feel uplifted by the folks that I get to work with. I mean, I, even though I work for a private law firm and my law firm has lots of large corporate clients, the people that I get to work with,
00:32:51
Speaker
are voters and they are voters who have been sort of edged out and intentionally so. And to win a case for them and to make sure that they get to be heard has just been, you know, sort of one of the great experiences of my life, not just professionally, but sort of in general. Thank you. I want to talk more about the voting stuff because I feel like we are in this space where we are and in part because, you know, our last president
Voting Rights Challenges and False Narratives
00:33:19
Speaker
basically presented voting as this space where there's just constant fraud and, you know, dead people voting and people who are undocumented and people, you know, making up fake votes. Just this whole story that was really deeply, deeply problematic and totally false. Right. And so creating this really dangerous rhetoric, which we know, of course, ended up with the January 6th insurrection.
00:33:46
Speaker
So the work that you're doing is so critical, and I'd love to hear you talk more about some of the other kinds of things that we're seeing that are voter suppression efforts, who gets targeted in those voter suppression efforts, and what it takes to create spaces where voting is not, that we're not putting up these constant roadblocks to people being able to vote, which is something we should want people to do in droves.
00:34:16
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I mean, sort of the, I said that this Trump presidency inspired me to do voting rights work. Even then I did not expect what happened after the 2020 presidential election. And actually I was part of a team that traveled to Georgia defending against voting rights, really cases that had
00:34:39
Speaker
Tremendous voting rights impacts bought by Trump and brought by Trump and his supporters in the state of Georgia. And there was an onslaught of litigation. And what happened was, you know, sort of the bigger names, the Kraken folks, the Sidney Powell's and the Lynn Woods brought their lawsuits. But then other folks who had sort of been manipulated by the rhetoric of this lie that Georgia's election had somehow been corrupted because they didn't like the result were bringing a lot of pro se litigation.
00:35:07
Speaker
copycat litigation in the state courts that really was along the same lines. And I think that all of the litigation was troubling. The federal court litigation that was getting a lot of media attention was troubling in the sense that it's hard to imagine that somebody who is admitted to the practice of law and is supposed to carry with them all of the responsibility that comes with that would file some of these pleadings, which failed universally, not just in Georgia, but to file these
00:35:37
Speaker
frivolous lawsuits in the first instance was just sort of jarring to me. I'm used to working with folks even when they're on the opposite side of the V for me who carry the responsibility of their position and take it very seriously and would never file papers along those lines. But I think the other thing that was really troubling about the folks who were filing these pro se lawsuits in county courts
00:36:07
Speaker
was that they really, really believed it. And you saw that people were willing to face the cost of attorney's fees, for example, if we had to defend against a recount claim, that would have been detrimental, I think, to the average person if they had to pay to defend against a months-long, really fast-paced lawsuit seeking a recount. And I think that
00:36:33
Speaker
A question of whether anybody ever would have sought fees is sort of a different story or even if the state would have done that, but the fact of the matter was that people were convinced. And we saw that come to a head on January 6th, but it was really disturbing. And the result of all of those completely false and repeatedly disproven claims of irregularities and fraud in the 2020 election.
00:36:58
Speaker
will be a new wave of voter suppression laws that make it harder to vote in general, sort of fighting off a ghost that's been disproven of irregularities and fraud. And, you know, in the past, I think the voter suppression argument had been that there was so much fraud and it was just undetected, even though nobody could ever point to it. And we had to fight against that. And now the new argument somehow will be that
00:37:27
Speaker
there's a lack of public confidence because of fraud, because of this big lie, because people were shilling misinformation and undermining confidence in our very democracy for their own political gains, that because public confidence was so damaged by that narrative that now voter suppression laws are somehow necessary to restore public confidence and sort of the circular logic and really the nefariousness of that
00:37:54
Speaker
agenda is something startling. And already, you know, as states are in their new legislative sessions, we see that these laws are appearing with a particular focus on making it more difficult for folks to vote by mail, even though all of these allegations that voting by mail was rife before irregularities have been disproven and are not true, to make it harder for people to vote in that way in particular, but also to add
00:38:23
Speaker
you know, to increase voter ID restrictions in places where they already exist, to make them more difficult, to further limit them, and to impose them in places where they don't. To make early voting more limited is another thing that is so clearly targeted really at the Democratic vote. And, you know, the fact that you can sort of see in the numbers that in particular places, certain types of voters who tend to lean Democratic are more likely to vote early
00:38:51
Speaker
potentially because election day is not a federal holiday and people have to work on that day, you know, voting on a weekend, uh, voting in advance, voting with more flexibility has been the way that many people have, you know, has been the only way that many people were able to vote, especially before the expansion of vote by mail, where you would, where you want to take a moment and pause at the victory of 2020 and all of the successful challenges that my group and nonprofit groups in the voting rights arena were able to bring in win.
00:39:19
Speaker
The reality of it is that for every law that was struck down, there are three more now that are proposed in their place, and there's a lot of work left to do. And it's work not just to be done sort of in the courtroom. I think there's a lot of work to be done about sort of disabusing people of this big lie, of the falsehood that people, I think people really, really believe and are terrified by and have dug their heels in, even though judges around this country have said,
00:39:49
Speaker
You can't prove this. In fact, we can disprove this, whatever it might be, how to work with family members and folks within our circles or tangentially involved in our orbits and try to help them see the truth and the consequences of what these voter suppression laws will actually bring. And then there's no need for them. I think there's a lot of work to be done.
00:40:14
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that is just so striking about what we lived through during that 2020 election cycle is how willing some politicians were to totally undermine our existing democracy.
00:40:33
Speaker
I found it pretty shocking, right? And this sort of willingness to repeat a narrative, even post January 6th, to repeat a narrative that clearly had inspired people to reject the idea that ours is a highly functioning system. And as you say, there was no evidence that there was all this sort of rampant fraud and all these sort of problematic things happening. And so it's very frustrating to be in this space of trying to
00:41:02
Speaker
I say it's already been disproved and yet we have to continue to disprove it and disprove it and disprove it. And I would imagine, you know, we were already dealing with these rollbacks of the Voting Rights Act and, you know, preclearance and all of these sorts of things. And the Supreme Court of anything is likely to be even less willing to expand voting protections.
00:41:28
Speaker
you know, to keep people from having their votes suppressed. That was true, you know, a couple of years ago. So I wonder whether, you know, you sort of have any predictions, right? We see, as you say, all of this legislation coming out of the States, it will be challenged. There will be challenges. You know, what do you, what do you see in the next few years in terms of voting litigation and the potential increase in voter suppression?
00:41:54
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, the one thing that I would really love to see would be more federal legislation expanding voting rights and not having to rely on the courts to resolve some of these issues. I think that when my practice, you know, which has only lasted three years in this group began, more of my litigation happened in federal courts. I think now I expect there will be probably as much happening in state courts under state constitutions
00:42:23
Speaker
some of which have even more robust protections for the right to vote than the federal constitution. So it's everything that the 1st and 14th Amendment and 15th and 26th Amendment, that the federal constitution guarantees us plus more. So I think going to state courts to ask them to uphold that promise to their people is something that we'll see more of. And I think that one fear we had as the Supreme Court, as the shape of the Supreme Court shifted
00:42:53
Speaker
in the last few years is that the Supreme Court might, you know, invoke the elections clause and say that the states can do effectively whatever they want without getting involved in the litigation at all. And it has been, you know, been a relief to see that that has not been the course thus far. And I hope that that continues to be the case. Our Constitution offers so many protections.
00:43:18
Speaker
of the right to vote that are so important and fundamental to our democracy. I hope the Supreme Court continues to recognize that even if the outcome of the question is not always one that I might agree with. I think the danger and the fear of invoking the elections clause to not engage was something that we had, that some scholars have predicted and it has not gone that way. Speaking to the fact that the United States Supreme Court did not rule the way that some of us had feared,
00:43:47
Speaker
Uh, with regard to the voting rights litigation last election cycle, um, there's an important case that one of my colleagues and mentors, partner Bruce Spivel will be arguing before the Supreme Court actually on March 2nd, this year that deals with section two of the Voting Rights Act and whether there is a disparate impact based on race.
00:44:07
Speaker
because of Arizona's prohibition on out of precinct voting, that is, casting a ballot outside of your assigned election district. And also on Arizona's ban on ballot collection assistance, that is Arizona's prohibition on helping another return their ballot unless you meet certain really strict criteria while this case
00:44:32
Speaker
presents a number of interesting legal issues. We remain optimistic that the Supreme Court will affirm the Ninth Circuit's fantastic decision en banc that these two provisions do violate the Voting Rights Act. And I remain confident that the Supreme Court will come out the right way in this particular case in question as well. We always find a way. This is certainly not the least favorable federal judiciary to bring voting rights challenges.
00:45:00
Speaker
that civil rights attorneys have ever seen. And you know, you persist and you fight and you keep going and eventually things keep shifting in the right direction.
Future Engagement and Conclusion
00:45:10
Speaker
Sometimes it's one step forward, two steps back for a while, but eventually, you know, I do think that it's still worth the fight and we get where we need to go one day or another. Absolutely. So I want to ask you two final questions.
00:45:27
Speaker
So the first question is, do you have advice for folks who want to be involved in the fight against voter suppression in their states or wherever they happen to be living? What are some of the things that people can do individually? Yeah. I think one thing that a lot of folks don't realize is that you can testify before your legislature, that you can actually keep an eye on legislation that
00:45:52
Speaker
doesn't seem right to you, you can research it from home for free on the state legislature's website and that you can actually go and testify and talk about the impact of legislation, either for good or for bad. And I think that that's such a powerful tool. If you want to attack the issue from the legal side, there are great regional groups that are doing fantastic work. I mean, we did so much litigation in Pennsylvania this cycle with Rutgers Camden at least sort of being
00:46:21
Speaker
really a New Jersey, Pennsylvania school in a lot of ways. There's a lot of worthwhile work to do in Pennsylvania, keeping an eye on legislation and raising issues as they arise. And then potentially working either in a pro bono capacity or trying to work with groups like the ACLU. Advancement Project does amazing work in the voting rights arena. Oftentimes, you know, if you have a private practice and you can devote the entirety of your time to voting rights work, you can get involved.
00:46:49
Speaker
on particular cases and volunteer time in that way. And I think it's super important. One thing I'll say is, you know, coming from the private sector and oftentimes having political backing of my litigation, sometimes that money doesn't exist until the even numbered year benefit of nonprofit and pro bono work is that you don't have to challenge the law with a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction, sort of this emergency relief before the election.
00:47:16
Speaker
If you can really keep an eye on your state's legislature and know what's going on now and challenge these laws, maybe before they even go into effect, you know, in that 90 day, 60 day window between the law being signed by your governor, becoming an active law, bring the challenge then and stomp that bad law out right away. It's so easy not to think or to forget about voting rights when it's not an election year or so. I think the most important thing that we can do is to, you know, not sort of sleep on it until
00:47:45
Speaker
we are thinking about voting again. Absolutely. And then the last question that I want to ask you is what piece of advice would you offer to someone who's getting ready to head to law school, who wants to be a public interest lawyer, who maybe like you is a first generation college student or first generation law student? What can you offer them to help them make it through the gauntlet that is law school? Yeah. So I think the first is to know that
00:48:12
Speaker
You're an important member of this profession later on, that for as much as we might all deal with imposter syndrome, regardless of whether we have lawyers in the family or our first generation professionals or what have you, I think a competitive field, like being an attorney, it triggers imposter syndrome in a lot of us. Know that you're good enough, that you're worthy and that your unique voice and your particular experiences are going to make you a better lawyer, not a worse one. And to really hold strong to that
00:48:42
Speaker
There will be times when people who maybe hold positions of seniority in the profession don't recognize that, but don't worry because eventually you'll be in charge. And your colleagues recognize it now. And there are partners and there are lawyers who recognize and appreciate that diversity is one of the greatest assets of any practice, of any group of lawyers. And that, you know, for as much as you might think that you're not the typical lawyer, you know, try to think of those things as strengths and just do it because
00:49:11
Speaker
You'll surprise yourself. Absolutely. And being typical is boring anyway. Totally. All right. Well, thank you so, so much for taking the time to talk to me today. It was great to see you. It was great to talk to you. I'm so happy about the work that you're doing. It is incredibly vital. It's so frustrating that we have to focus so much on these
00:49:35
Speaker
fake claims of voter fraud when we know that there is actual voter suppression happening on a regular basis. So, you know, keep up the good work, keep fighting the good fight, and hopefully I'll get to see you in person at some point. Yeah. Thank you so much, Dean Mudgerson. Absolutely. It's been a pleasure.
00:49:59
Speaker
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