June 2009
Arnold & Porter LLP’s pro bono client, the League of Women Voters of Ohio, has resolved its four-year voting rights lawsuit against the Ohio Secretary of State. The landmark agreement calls for new institutional procedures in the electoral process and settles a lawsuit filed by Arnold & Porter (along with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and other civil rights organizations) in 2005. The lawsuit alleged that then Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, Governor Bob Taft, and their predecessors failed to protect the fundamental rights of eligible Ohio voters to vote and have their votes counted, as required by the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
As a result of the settlement, the Ohio Secretary of State agreed to a consent decree that will be in place through the 2014 election, which requires the Secretary of State to implement or maintain over 40 separate election reforms. These reforms include significant new measures to improve pollworker training, enhancement of election day resource allocation, prevention of long lines on election day, improving the processing of absentee and provisional ballots, improving access for voters with disabilities, adding safeguards around the use of electronic voting machines, and improving post-election reporting.
The settlement is the culmination of a massive pro bono effort by Arnold & Porter over the past four years, involving over 20 lawyers from the firm’s Washington, DC, New York, and Los Angeles offices. In total the firm contributed over 7,000 attorney hours to the case. The lead lawyers for the case were John Freedman and James Joseph. Arnold & Porter was co-lead counsel with Proskauer Rose and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Arnold & Porter’s historic commitment to pro bono is one of the core values of the firm. Arnold & Porter has no single "signature" project the pro bono program is diverse and active in all of the firm’s offices in the US and abroad. There is a prominent focus on "impact" cases—those that have an impact on the legal landscape—including areas in which the firm has been a leader, such as death penalty cases, political asylum, election reform, and international human rights, among others.