BATON ROUGE, La. (CN) — Hundreds, if not thousands, of people with disabilities across Louisiana will be hurt by new voting laws recently approved by Republican Governor Jeff Landry, a nonprofit says in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Disability Rights Louisiana, an advocacy group that provides legal and other support to disabled citizens, say in a complaint filed in federal court that the new voting laws will disenfranchise disabled Louisianans and warns that the new laws will “threaten criminal liability for those who seek to assist them with voting.”
An estimated one in three people in Louisiana have a disability that might prevent them from going in person to the polls, the group says in its complaint. This amounts to more than 1.1 million people statewide.
New restrictions will criminalize vital parts of the election process and will prevent people from voting, Disability Rights Louisiana says.
“In Louisiana — a state of more than 4.5 million citizens — a mere three instances of election fraud have been identified since 2016,” the group says in their complaint.
“There is no indication that Louisiana law enforcement has failed to actively guard Louisiana elections or investigate allegations of fraud. Elections in Louisiana are fair and free,” the group adds.
Despite those assertions, the Louisiana legislature recently passed multiple bills aimed at imposing criminal penalties on those who help people who are disabled, or are unable to vote in person for any other reason.
“The statutes at issue facially violate the Voting Rights Act and threaten to make criminals of the caretakers, nurses, doctors, or others who assist individuals with disabilities and the elderly,” Disability Rights Louisiana says in their lawsuit.
The group is seeking an injunction to stop the new laws before they go into effect. Two laws are slated to take effect Aug. 1 of this year, and two others are set to go into effect on July 1, 2025.
Disability Rights Louisiana says that many people who have a disability tend to rely on absentee voting due to mobility issues and limited transportation. Additionally, many disabled people, especially the elderly, live in residential institutions and can only vote by absentee ballot.
Because many people have limited family support, they rely on hired caretakers who might have more than one person they care for, making it unlikely the caretaker will be able to help each person they work for vote in person.
In the most recent election, more than 95,000 people voted absentee by mail, including a large number of disabled or elderly voters.
The four new statutes are Louisiana Act No. 302, Act No. 317, Act No. 380 and Act No. 712.
Acts 380 and 317 prohibit any single person from delivering more than one absentee ballot and imposes criminal penalties for anyone who does.
Acts 712 and 302 bar anyone from serving as a witness on more than one ballot or from helping more than one person with their ballot and impose criminal charges for anyone who doesn’t comply.
All four new acts conflict with Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which entitles disabled individuals to get assistance from a person of their choice, according to Disability Rights Louisiana.
Named defendants in the lawsuit are Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry and Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, in their official capacities.
The Louisiana Legislature passed all four acts in June as part of an 11-bill package called the “election integrity incentive,” which was aimed at boosting the state’s election integrity policies and procedures, according to Landry in a recent interview with KALB, a Baton Rouge news station.
Neither Landry nor Murrill could immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.