Defending Democracy: Voting Rights in 2024

ACS and YLDems are excited to announce that next Tuesday the 12th from 12:10-1:10 in SLB 124 we'll be hosting three incredible voting rights lawyers from the ACLU Voting Rights Project and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to talk about their work fighting voter suppression and litigating under the Voting Rights Act, including the recent Supreme Court cases Allen v. Milligan and Alexander v. South Carolina Conference of the NAACP. 

John Cusick serves as Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund where he works on voting rights and criminal legal system cases and matters. He has litigated voting rights cases nationwide, including federal lawsuits challenging penal disenfranchisement schemes, voter-registration restrictions, limited early-voting access opportunities, and other racially discriminatory policies that impede access to the ballot box for Black voters and other voters of color. He is part of litigation teams challenging racially discriminatory redistricting maps in Arkansas and South Carolina. And he has spearheaded LDF’s advocacy efforts statewide and at the county level to combat racial voter suppression tactics and led or co-led election protection efforts in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas.

Antonio Lavalle Ingram II serves as Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund where he works on voting rights and educational equity cases. He is a graduate of Yale College and UC Berkeley School of Law. He previously served as a federal judicial law clerk for the honorable Ivan L. Lemelle in the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans, Louisiana and for Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. He also completed a Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship in Malawi where he worked for the Malawian government and served in their Anti-Corruption Bureau.

Davin Rosborough is a Deputy Director with the ACLU Voting Rights Project and has been part of the team since 2017. Since joining, Davin has served as the ACLU’s lead counsel in cases challenging Alabama’s 2021 redistricting maps including in Allen v. Milligan, in which the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a decision finding that Alabama likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in drawing its congressional districts. He also helps lead the challenge to Georgia’s 2021 voter suppression law, SB 202, and recently obtained a preliminary injunction against Georgia’s ban on providing food and water to voters waiting in lines longer than 150-feet from the polling-place entrance. Davin served as part of team that successfully challenged the addition of a citizenship question on the 2020 census as well as the Trump administration’s unsuccessful attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment count, acted as co-lead counsel in obtaining a preliminary injunction and favorable settlement against Missouri under the National Voter Registration Act, and helped obtain a preliminary injunction against Tennessee’s restrictive law targeting voter registration groups. He also worked to protect the right to safely vote by mail in light of COVID-19, serving as lead counsel in litigation resulting in consent decrees eliminating enforcement of Virginia’s absentee witness requirement during major 2020 elections, challenging Alabama’s restrictive mail-voting regime, and successfully opposing an attempt to eliminate drive-thru voting in Harris County, Texas.