This database consolidates and tracks litigation concerning the effect of the pandemic on election law. The purpose of this tool is to provide an interactive list of relevant cases that can be searched by issue, court, status, and jurisdiction.
Case Details
Drenth v. Boockvar
Closed
Drenth v. Boockvar, No. 1:20-cv-00829 (M.D. Penn.), 2020 WL 2745729 |
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| Case Summary | Joseph Drenth and National Federation of the Blind in Pennsylvania brought a civil rights case under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act asserting that Pennsylvania's election policies violated the rights of the blind by not providing accessible ballots for blind individuals to vote privately and independently from home. Due to COVID, their argument was that these policies (i.e., not providing accessible ballots) forced blind individuals to either forfeit their right to vote privately and independently or risk their health and safety by traveling to a polling place to vote in person. They moved for for a TRO/PI seeking to compel Pennsylvania to remedy this violation in time for the primary elections. | |
| Filed | 05/20/2020 | |
| State | Pennsylvania | |
| Type of Court | Federal | |
| Circuit | Third Circuit | |
| Status | Closed () | |
| Last Updated | 09/05/2020 | |
| Issue Tag(s) | Vote-by-Mail (Failure to Provide Vote-by-Mail Accommodations for Voters with Disabilities) | |
| Complaint(s) | 05/21/2020: Complaint filed. | |
| Dispositive Ruling(s) | 05/27/2020: Order/Ruling, PI Granted. While the court determined that preliminary injunctive relief was appropriate, and also determined that the UOCAVA remedy requested by Plaintiffs was the most adequate, because the court was persuaded that it was not feasible to implement the UOCAVA remedy in time for the primary election, the court granted the preliminary injunctive relief but ordered the AWIB remedy identified by Defendants as the most feasible to implement within the time remaining. | |
| 08/18/2020: Order/Ruling, Defendants' motion for summary judgment is granted. | ||
| 08/18/2020: Order/Ruling, The Court found that the state's new remote ballot marking system, which would be in place before the November 3rd General Election had already provided a remedy for the injury claimed by the Plaintiff. Therefore, the Court dismissed Plaintiff's claims on summary judgment as moot. | ||
