Fighting for Fair Representation
SCSJ’s Voting Rights program works alongside communities across the South to help shape the legal principles on gerrymandering, vote dilution, and voter suppression, with the overall goal of protecting fair election systems for all.
OUR WORK
SCSJ takes a multi-pronged approach to securing voting rights, combining impact litigation, legal and issue advocacy, research, data analysis, communications, public education, and training.
Voting Rights Work
Our work focuses on historically disenfranchised and underrepresented communities by helping them advocate for fair policies, procedures, and voting districts that provide them an equal opportunity to have their voices heard and votes counted. With stronger civic education and responsive representation, these communities gain better access to the resources and services they need to dismantle structural racism and oppression and build a more inclusive democracy.
We fight for racially equitable voting maps at every level of government through litigation, communications, community advocacy, and education. By involving communities directly in the redistricting process, we work to secure fair representation for historically disadvantaged voters.
As anti-democratic partisan entrenchment grows, SCSJ fights voter suppression and lessens its impacts through litigation, legal advocacy, and other evolving strategies.
We firmly believe election protection and election administration must be a year-round priority — not just during federal election years. Through advocacy, education, and litigation, we work to make elections more inclusive and ensure they truly reflect the will of voters.
SCSJ created and houses the Southern Leadership for Voter Engagement (SOLVE) Network to educate and mobilize Southern communities to protect and expand voting rights. SOLVE Network members are given the tools to lead this work in their communities via communications, research, training, advocacy, policy, and education support.
Core Strategies
We believe litigation must be both proactive and defensive and always tied to the power-building and organizing strategies of the communities we serve. By weaving legal action together with broader advocacy and education, we give communities the tools to organize effectively, defend their voting rights, and link redistricting and anti-voter policies to the realities of daily life.
In today’s anti-voting rights climate, we often resolve issues outside the courtroom. Through legal and issue advocacy, we work to prevent harmful policies, prepare stronger cases when litigation is needed, and give our partners the information they need to be more effective. This work takes many forms: commenting on proposed maps or electoral rule changes, monitoring county boards of election compliance with state law and administrative rules, engaging directly with state and local elections officials, and sending legal demand and advocacy letters. We also submit amicus briefs in other voting rights cases to provide perspectives and legal arguments that might otherwise be missing.
While current trends require greater intentionality in filing new cases, impact litigation remains a critical tool for our partners and clients. It lays the foundation for advocacy, communications, and organizing victories. Our innovative litigation strategies — adopted by groups in other states and cited in judicial opinions — show the strength of our community lawyering model and how movements in the South can shape change nationwide.
Our work depends on community involvement, which means our partners need strong support for education, advocacy, and communications. We use our internal research and communications capacity to provide data-driven resources that help partners tell the story and shift the narrative on voting rights. We also provide expertise and counseling, so partners have the legal understandings they need to build more robust and organized advocacy.
Voting Rights Cases
Voting Rights News
Southern Voting Groups Getting Out the Vote in Local Elections This Fall
DURHAM, N.C. (Oct. 28, 2025) — General elections will be held across the South in late October and early November, with voters deciding who will lead their cities and towns, steer local school policies and more. Turnout tends to be much lower in these “off” election years without races for governors, Congress and president on…
Read More Southern Voting Groups Getting Out the Vote in Local Elections This Fall
Voters, Pro-Democracy Groups Seek to Stop Retaliatory Redistricting Targeting NC Black Belt
DURHAM, N.C. (Oct. 28, 2025) — Individual voters and two pro-democracy groups are challenging the North Carolina General Assembly’s latest congressional map — the fifth in six years — as an unconstitutional, retaliatory redraw designed to punish Black voters in the state’s historic Black Belt for how they voted in 2024. Lawmakers passed the map…
Read More Voters, Pro-Democracy Groups Seek to Stop Retaliatory Redistricting Targeting NC Black Belt