Red Line for Civil Rights

Restraint. That’s one of the core rules that federal prosecutors should follow when investigating election crimes, according to the Department of Justice’s own manual. This year, the Department of Justice quietly took the rulebook off its website, so we’ve published it on ours. The manual, Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses, is DOJ’s longstanding guide for federal prosecutors and FBI agents who handle election crimes. Its most recent edition, published in 2017, explains not only what election crimes are, but also how to investigate them without disrupting the election itself. DOJ removed the manual from its website earlier this year and has not publicly explained why. With the midterms two weeks away and DOJ claiming it will send more than 1,000 monitors to polling places—including criminal prosecutors, who until this year have not been included in such efforts—the manual’s guidance matters more than ever. Here are a few apt reminders from the manual as we head into the midterms, in DOJ’s own words. Read the manual for yourself and learn more about the historic role of DOJ’s election monitoring at the links in the comments.

Earlier this year, DOJ moved to dismiss the federal charges it brought against two Louisville Metro Police officers for their roles in the death of Breonna Taylor in March 2020. Now, neither will be held accountable by the federal government. DOJ had charged the officers, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, with knowingly drafting and approving a false warrant affidavit—a document that was used to obtain the “no-knock” warrant that ultimately led to Ms. Taylor's death. But after the Trump administration took office, DOJ reversed course and asked the court to dismiss the case, later claiming to ABC News that the charges represented “inappropriate, weaponized federal overreach.” The judge closed the case in March. Breonna Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, criticized DOJ’s move, saying her daughter was killed because of the officers’ “lies and negligence,” and “somebody should be held accountable for that.” As she explained, “It’s clear they have not served me or Breonna well.” She is not alone. This is just one example of how DOJ is working to quash efforts to hold officers accountable for violating people’s civil rights. Read more in the comments.

Last Friday, a federal judge struck down a nationwide voter-roll program run by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the office that has protected the right to vote since its creation in 1957. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan opened her opinion by recalling that the Division, long called the “crown jewel” of the Justice Department, “was forged in the Civil Rights Movement.” Against that history, she wrote, “this case is anomalous.” Here’s what DOJ was doing: demanding nearly every state’s full voter list, arranging to share the data it received with DHS and ICE, checking that data against a citizenship database it knew can misidentify naturalized citizens as noncitizens, and pressing states to remove the registered voters it flagged. In the court’s words: “Behind all the window dressing, the challenged policy represents the federal government's attempt to decide who gets to vote. But Congress has left that authority where our Constitution has always placed it: with the states.” DOJ even argued that every registered voter was a subject of its fraud investigation. The court’s answer: “No reasonable American would fathom that every voter in every corner of the country is a subject of a (seemingly perpetual) federal investigation merely for exercising their fundamental right to vote.” Eligible citizens had already been purged. The court vacated “a policy that has removed United States citizens from the voter rolls in their home states and risks disenfranchising many more.” The court's bottom line: “DOJ cannot run roughshod over longstanding laws that were carefully crafted to protect the rights of the American people.”

Today we're launching Switching Sides, a Red Line series tracking legal issues on which DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has reversed its earlier positions. First up is DOJ’s interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act's 90-day quiet period, which limits when states can run programs that systematically remove voters from the rolls before a federal election. In 2012, DOJ sued Florida, alleging that its program to remove suspected noncitizens from the rolls violated the quiet period, and in 2014, the 11th Circuit agreed in a separate case. In 2024, DOJ sued Alabama and Virginia over programs that also targeted alleged noncitizens during the quiet period, and DOJ won preliminary injunctions in both cases (though the Supreme Court paused Virginia’s before the 2024 election). In 2025, DOJ dismissed both cases. Now DOJ is asking the Supreme Court to rule that the quiet period doesn't apply to noncitizen removal programs at all. The Court hears argument in RNC v. Mi Familia Vota on Dec. 8. Same law. Opposite positions. Swipe to see DOJ's own words, then and now. Read about these cases at the links in the comments.

Last week, Chief U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. acknowledged the withdrawal of a DOJ Civil Rights Division attorney from a disability rights case, U.S. v. Rhode Island, after more than a decade, writing that the court, the people of Rhode Island, and the state’s developmental disabilities community “extend their heartfelt thanks.” The case enforced the Americans with Disabilities Act's integration mandate. The 2014 consent decree was the nation’s first statewide settlement addressing the right of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to receive state-funded employment and day services in the community alongside people without disabilities, rather than in segregated sheltered workshops and facility-based day programs. On June 18, 2026, DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo that seeks to undermine states’ obligation under the integration mandate. Red Line’s analysis of that memo is linked in the comments. Since then, DOJ has walked away from Olmstead cases across the country. U.S. v. Rhode Island is one of approximately two dozen cases that DOJ could move to close next. As DOJ pulls back from important cases like these, Judge McConnell’s order points to what DOJ’s long-serving career attorneys brought to the work: expertise, dedication, institutional knowledge, and continuity across administrations.

A post. A tag. A foregone conclusion. In Just Security, Red Line’s Regan Rush and Megan Marks document how DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under the Trump administration is often “working backwards” from a conclusion, rather than working forward from the facts and the law. https://lnkd.in/gzRecs8X

A new NBC News investigation by Mike Hixenbaugh and Colleen Long identifies the origins of the Trump administration’s attack on the right of people with disabilities to live in their own homes and communities: President Trump’s fixation on “aesthetics and cleanliness in the nation’s capital.” Their reporting connects the dots. An executive order aimed at sweeping unhoused people into institutions. A White House meeting involving Stephen Miller’s team and the Cicero Institute, a think tank founded by billionaire venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale. A June 2026 Office of Legal Counsel opinion written by a former senior official in the Texas Solicitor General’s office, who previously tried, and failed, to undermine the Supreme Court's 1999 Olmstead decision in court. DOJ’s reversals in long-running cases and retreat from Olmstead enforcement. Together, they show how a push to clear unhoused people off the streets of D.C. became a legal argument that erodes federal civil rights enforcement for millions of people with disabilities.  They are the ones bearing the cost: their ability to stay out of institutions now depends on rights DOJ no longer defends. Read the article here: https://lnkd.in/eJg254th

DOJ said last week that it had closed over 50 school desegregation cases. But its press release named only two: Waterbury, Connecticut, and Flagler County, Florida. Red Line is digging through court records to map the scope of DOJ’s retreat from civil rights enforcement. There is no expiration date on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education—the landmark 1954 case holding that racially segregated schools violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. For decades, DOJ has worked to combat racial segregation by securing and enforcing desegregation orders. One of the cases DOJ has walked away from during the current admininstration is a Louisiana case called Thomas et al. v. St. Martin Parish School Board et al. (W.D. La. 65-cv-11314). The court will hold a hearing in that case on Friday, October 9. DOJ’s seat at counsel’s table will be empty. The St. Martin Parish case began in 1965 when Black students challenged the segregation of their community’s schools. DOJ joined the case in 1969. At court hearings in 2021, 2022, and 2023, DOJ presented evidence that St. Martin Parish still maintained a dual system of racially identifiable elementary schools. As recently as May 2023, the court entered an order requiring the school district to take additional steps to desegregate student enrollment. DOJ was at the table when plans were developed to implement those steps. Then, in December 2025, DOJ walked away. The plaintiffs, represented by private counsel including the Legal Defense Fund, continue to litigate this case to secure equal educational opportunity for students in St. Martin Parish. Red Line will monitor this and other school desegregation cases. Stay tuned as we find more.

As the nation grapples with calls to regulate AI, the head of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division says she “look[s] forward to protecting some of our nation’s greatest technological innovators!” DOJ’s Civil Rights Division exists to protect people from discrimination—not tech companies. But in April, it joined a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk’s xAI to challenge a Colorado law requiring companies that develop or deploy “high risk” AI systems to use “reasonable care” to prevent discrimination in hiring, lending, healthcare, and school admissions. DOJ intervened in the case under Section 902 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a statute enacted to empower the federal government to defend people denied equal protection. Here, DOJ instead used it to back xAI’s argument that the Equal Protection Clause bars Colorado from requiring companies to guard against algorithmic discrimination. According to this DOJ, preventing discrimination is itself discrimination.  That position is consistent with President Trump's Executive Order 14365, which denounces “onerous and excessive laws emerging from the States” and specifically singles out Colorado’s law. Following DOJ’s intervention and industry lobbying, Colorado repealed its law and replaced it with a new version that lacks the original’s affirmative requirement to protect consumers from algorithmic discrimination. The new law instead requires disclosure that AI is being used by companies involved in housing, employment, education, and legal services, explanations of how AI was used, and an opportunity for meaningful human review of those decisions. The federal district court granted a stay in the case until the state issues regulations for the new law. As AI becomes increasingly central to consequential decisions about access to employment, housing, education, and healthcare, the Trump administration is fighting to protect the “innovators,” not the people whose civil rights may be violated by the technology.   Read Red Line’s analysis at: https://lnkd.in/eq4ZGfNG

DOJ’s Civil Rights Division plans to send 1,000 election monitors to the polls this November, more than triple the number sent for the last midterms. For decades, DOJ’s election monitoring focused on one thing: observing compliance with voting and civil rights laws to ensure full and equal access to the ballot. This year, DOJ has tied the program to a new purpose. In Red Line’s latest in-depth analysis, we lay out how the program has traditionally worked and what’s different about it this time around. Thank you to Justice Connection for highlighting this piece on Substack. https://lnkd.in/ernSBdEs