The Justice Department under Merrick Garland has often more resembled a left-wing blog than a sober, impartial enforcer of the law. Jack Smith’s antics may get the most headlines, but the Civil Rights Division under Kristen Clarke has regularly filed ideologically charged lawsuits against states that try to govern themselves, enforce their own laws, or step up when the feds won’t enforce their laws. Clarke and her anti-democracy team are at it again with a lawsuit filed on Friday against Virginia, on the heels of a similar suit filed on September 27 against Alabama, to prevent those states from removing noncitizens from the voting rolls before Election Day. Andy McCarthy covered this suit yesterday. I’d like to take a deeper dive into both the law and the politics.
The lawsuit against Alabama takes an aggressive reading of the relevant federal law, based on a number of facts that the DOJ believes make a persuasive case. The suit against Virginia just copies the Alabama suit but with all of the persuasive facts stripped out. It is therefore an especially weak case to test the DOJ’s legal theory.
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