State of Louisiana v. U.S. Election Assistance Commission

The League of Women Voters of Louisiana and its national counterpart, Voice of the Experienced, the Louisiana NAACP, and Power Coalition for Equity and Justice (collectively, the "League Intervenors"), represented by the ACLU Voting Rights Project, Campaign Legal Center, the ACLU of Louisiana, Southern Poverty Law Center, the Brennan Center for Justice, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, moved to intervene in State of Louisiana v. U.S. Election Assistance Commission to defend against Louisiana's proposed changes to its state-specific instructions on the federal voter registration form ("federal form").

Throughout 2025, Louisiana sent multiple letters and requests to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission ("EAC"), which administers the federal form, asking that it change Louisiana's state-specific instructions to require registrants to provide additional proof of citizenship. The federal form requires applicants to attest, under penalty of perjury, that they are a U.S. citizen in order to be registered to vote. Congressional committees have found this requirement to be an adequate safeguard to deter fraudulent registrations. Louisiana petitioned the EAC to have its state-specific instructions changed so that applicants would have to provide, if they had one, an immigration identifier, and, if they did not, their place of birth, sex, and mother's maiden name. The state indicated that it would use this additional information to search databases with information on applicants' citizenship status, raising concerns that Louisiana would, primarily or in part, perform such checks through the Department of Homeland Security's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements ("SAVE") system, which is known to misidentify naturalized citizens as noncitizens, among other common errors. The EAC rejected this request, and Louisiana sued, arguing that the rejection violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the federal Constitution. This is despite Louisiana's Secretary of State Nancy Landry having said, after running the state's voter rolls through SAVE, that noncitizen registration or voting "is not a systematic problem in Louisiana."

Meanwhile, all the pro-voter groups that filed to intervene in the suit Louisiana filed against the EAC were already fighting back against another attempt by Louisiana to require voters to provide additional proof of citizenship. Louisiana's Act 500 (previously known as SB 436) was passed in 2024, and it requires applicants for voter registration in Louisiana to provide documentary proof of citizenship, though it did not apply to the federal form. The pro-voter groups who filed to intervene here are also the plaintiffs in League of Women Voters of Louisiana v. Landry, where they are challenging Act 500 in the U.S. District Court of the Middle District of Louisiana as unlawful under the National Voter Registration Act and the federal Constitution.

Now, though Act 500 did not at all affect the federal form, Louisiana is arguing that the EAC is unlawfully preventing Louisiana from enforcing Act 500 if the EAC by not changing Louisiana's state-specific federal form instructions to require additional proof of citizenship from federal form applicants. Like Act 500, if Louisiana succeeded in getting its instructions changed, it would impede the League of Women Voters of Louisiana v. Landry plaintiffs, who are the League Intervenors here, in carrying out their missions of registering as many legally eligible voters as possible. Louisiana's suit against the EAC also carries the potential of serious nationwide consequences, as other states have indicated that they would also seek additional proof of citizenship from federal form applicants if they were able to do so. This gives the national League of Women Voters, in particular, a strong interest as an intervenor in this suit.

The pro-voter League Intervenors would play an essential role in State of Louisiana v. U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Two EAC Commissioners voted against changing Louisiana's instructions on the federal form, but the other two Commissioners voted to allow it (falling short of the majority vote requirement for such an action to be approved), indicating that the EAC is of two minds about the proposal. Plus, the Trump administration has advocated for documentary proof of citizenship requirements, and the Department of Justice has been suing states for their private voter data and executing agreements with cooperating states to run their voter rolls through SAVE. This all indicates that it is, at best, highly questionable whether Louisiana's suit would be meaningfully defended absent the League Intervenors' involvement.