Clean Elections Court Victory! [Weekly Update]

Judicial Watch attorneys this week filed a motion for preliminary injunction to immediately prevent Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot from denying Daily Caller News Foundation reporter Thomas Catenacci’s interview request on the basis of race.

The lawsuit was initially filed on May 27, 2021, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division ( Catenacci et al v. Lightfoot (No. 1:21-cv-02852)). Christine Svenson of Svenson Law Offices in Chicago, Illinois, is assisting Judicial Watch with the lawsuit.

Judicial Watch details in the motion that:

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is only granting interviews to “journalists of color” to mark the two-year anniversary of her inauguration. Plaintiff Thomas Catenacci, a White journalist for the Daily Caller News Foundation, requested an interview of Mayor Lightfoot on her two-year anniversary. To date, almost two weeks after Plaintiffs’ request and despite two follow-up emails, Mayor Lightfoot has not agreed to an interview with Catenacci, apparently due to the mayor’s “journalists of color” only interview policy. The mayor’s refusal to be interviewed by Catenacci violates Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights and Catenacci’s right to equal protection. Plaintiffs move for a preliminary injunction to prevent further, irreparable harm.

On May 18, 2021, Mayor Lightfoot’s office informed multiple reporters that she would grant one-on-one interviews, “ only to Black or Brown journalists .” The next day, the mayor released a letter doubling down on her discriminatory policy. Since that time, the Mayor has granted at least one interview request from a self-identified Latino reporter and none to white reporters.

We sued after Catenacci, a white male, emailed Mayor Lightfoot’s office requesting a one-on-one interview with the Mayor. The office never replied to the request or to two additional follow up emails from Catenacci.

The lawsuit alleges Mayor Lightfoot purposefully discriminated against Catenacci, “because of his race by stating that she would only grant interview requests from ‘journalists of color’….”

“There is no excuse for racial discrimination. Every day that goes by without the Mayor granting my interview request because of my race violates my rights and tramples on the First Amendment,” said Thomas Catenacci.

Neil Patel, Daily Caller News Foundation president said: “It’s bonkers that we had to file this lawsuit. Chicago’s mayor should not be discriminating against journalists based on their color. That’s something that every normal American understands.”

Immediate court action is necessary to stop Mayor Lightfoot’s racist policy.

Mayor Lightfoot is not above the law.

A hearing has been set by the court for Monday morning so we should have news soon!

A federal court ruled our lawsuit can proceed against Illinois officials for denying public access to Illinois’ voter registration database.

We filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Illinois Conservative Union (ICU) and three of its officers, Carol Davis, Janet Shaw, and Loretta Savee, after Illinois state officials refused to allow them to obtain a copy of the state’s voter registration database despite their lawful request for it under federal law ( Illinois Conservative Union et al v. Illinois et al. (No. 1:20-cv-05542)).

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) provides that states “shall make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.”

When members of the ICU sought access to Illinois’ voter list, however, they were outrageously told they must view the database one record at a time, on a single computer screen, during “normal business hours,” at the State Board of Elections office in Springfield, Illinois, which is 200 miles from where they live. There are over 8 million voter registrations in Illinois. We argued that Illinois’ arbitrary restrictions “make a mockery” of federal law, “as much as a requirement that Plaintiffs wear blindfolds.”

United States District Court Judge Sara L. Ellis ruled that “Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that” Illinois law “conflicts with” and “and frustrates the NVRA’s purpose of providing voter information to the public to help ensure the accuracy and currency of voter registration rolls.” She also allowed a claim to proceed under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, on the ground that political committees in Illinois can access copies of the voter registration database while ordinary citizens cannot.

The claims will proceed against Illinois’ chief state elections official, Bernadette Matthews, the Acting Executive Director of the Illinois State Board of Elections. The Court directed further briefing on whether NVRA claims can proceed against the Board itself and the State of Illinois under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.

Dirty voter rolls can mean dirty elections – which is one reason why federal law requires access to voting rolls. This court ruling further affirms that Illinois voters and citizens have a right to review election rolls under federal law. Illinois’ stubborn and unlawful refusal to make them available suggests the state knows the rolls are a mess.

Judicial Watch is a national leader for cleaner elections.

In 2020, we sued North Carolina , Pennsylvania , and Colorado for failing to clean their voter rolls.

In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld a voter-roll cleanup program that resulted from a Judicial Watch settlement of a federal lawsuit with Ohio . California settled a federal lawsuit with us and in 2019 began the process of removing up to 1.6 million inactive names from Los Angeles County’s voter rolls.

Kentucky also began a cleanup of hundreds of thousands of old registrations after it entered into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit. In September of last year, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky agreed to extend the consent decree through 2025 after finding that that Kentucky’s former Democrat Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes breached its terms by delaying sending out voter notices, which allowed the names of people who have died or moved away to remain on the Commonwealth’s voter rolls.

In October 2020, we released a study that found 353 counties nationwide that had more voter registrations than citizens old enough to vote, i.e., counties where registration rates exceed 100%. These counties combined had about 1.8 million registrations over the 100%-registered mark.

Judicial Watch Attorney Robert Popper is the director of Judicial Watch’s election integrity initiative. We are being assisted in Chicago by Stephen F. Boulton of Anthony J. Peraica & Associates, Ltd.

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