A coalition of state and local advocacy groups are backing California’s suit against Measure B

“Local governments don’t get to write their own voter ID laws. The courts and the legislature have already settled this question.”

That’s a quote from Grace Zelphin, a senior attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. She’s referring to Measure B, a ballot initiative passed in Shasta this June that amended the county’s charter to implement voter ID, limited absentee voting and hand counting. The new election law is also slated to separate Shasta’s voter rolls from those of the state.

Along with the law firm Cooley LLP, legal representatives for ACLU branches in both northern and southern California filed the motion for a proposed amicus brief late last week. They’re representing a larger coalition of advocacy groups seeking to add support to a June lawsuit filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

Other groups named in the ACLU’s legal filing include Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, Asian Law Caucus, Disability Rights California, the League of Women Voters of California Education Fund and the League of Women Voters of the Redding Area. 

The state’s lawsuit hopes to strike down Measure B on the grounds that it would be illegal to implement under state law. Advocates argued in the filing last week that Shasta’s new charter law would also unfairly disenfranchise voters. 

The filing says that while laws like Measure B are ostensibly passed to protect election security, their “draconian changes” have the impact of suppressing voter turnout. Those changes, advocates said, will “uniquely burden voting rights among low-income voters, voters of color, voters with disabilities, and senior voters.”

In a press release about the legal filing today, the ACLU of Northern California focused on concerns that implementing Measure B would strip away voting rights by eliminating the way that more than 85% of Shasta voters currently vote: by mail. While current California law allows for universal voting by mail, Measure B’s language significantly limits who can vote by mail to include only the “infirm, military members, and U.S. citizens overseas.” That change would have a particular impact on seniors and voters with disabilities, the press release said, along with rural residents who live farther from polling places and people who can’t take time off work.

The ACLU’s press release also took a partisan framing, accusing Measure B of being “straight out of the same un-democratic playbook” as President Donald Trump’s recent attempt to seize California voting records. 

The state’s suit against Measure B was originally filed in an appellate court, which sent the case back to the local trial court level for a first hearing. That preliminary hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, July 13 at 8:30 a.m. in the Shasta County Superior Court, Dept. 63. 

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