Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Monday that she is directing the U.S. Department of Justice to dismiss its lawsuit against Georgia’s massive voter suppression law, Senate Bill 202. The announcement makes this the fifth Biden-era DOJ pro-voting lawsuit that’s been dropped under President Donald Trump.
Despite the DOJ withdrawing from the Georgia lawsuit, litigation is still ongoing in both district court and the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals, with various pro-voting and advocacy groups continuing legal efforts.
As soon as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed S.B. 202 into law in 2021, it was met with a slew of legal challenges from pro-voting groups and, eventually, the DOJ. Among the many anti-voting measures in the law are numerous restrictions on mail-in voting, changes to early voting rules, stricter voter ID requirements, restricting who can assist voters who need help completing their absentee ballot, limiting drop boxes in each county, new provisions for runoff elections and a line-warming ban — barring people from handing out water and food for those waiting in line to vote.
Six lawsuits against S.B. 202, including the DOJ’s initial lawsuit, were eventually consolidated into a single case that argued numerous provisions violated several federal laws — including the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. In July 2024, the DOJ officially joined the consolidated lawsuit against Georgia, arguing that many provisions of the law were unconstitutional because of the “disproportionate effect” that it has on Black voters, effectively disenfranchising them in the voting process. “In enacting SB 202, the Georgia General Assembly intended to deny or abridge the right of Black Georgians to vote on account of race or color,” the DOJ alleged in its complaint.
But shortly after Trump returned to the White House, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) sent a request to Bondi, asking the DOJ to drop its complaint against Georgia.
Nearly two months later, Bondi officially dropped the DOJ’s Georgia lawsuit. “Contrary to the Biden Administration’s false claims of suppression, Black voter turnout actually increased under SB 202,” Bondi said in a release. “Georgians deserve secure elections, not fabricated claims of false voter suppression meant to divide us. Americans can be confident that this Department of Justice will protect their vote and never play politics with election integrity.”
In a statement, Raffensperger said that the DOJ’s action “reaffirms that the Election Integrity Act stands on solid legal ground.
“Our commitment has always been to ensure fair and secure elections for every Georgian, despite losing an All-Star game and the left’s boycott of Georgia as a result of commonsense election law,” he said.
The DOJ’s withdrawal from the Georgia lawsuit is the latest move in the Trump administration’s larger goal to reverse Biden-era voting rights efforts. Earlier this month, the DOJ dropped its claims against Texas that its new state legislative and congressional maps violate the Voting Rights Act — a lawsuit that Biden’s DOJ filed in 2021. In January, the DOJ voluntarily dismissed its case challenging Virginia’s voter purge program, as well as a similar lawsuit challenging Alabama’s voter purge program.
Trump’s DOJ also dismissed a lawsuit against the members of Houston County, Georgia’s county board of commissioners challenging the at-large method for electing commissioners. And prior to oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court case challenging Louisiana’s new congressional map that has two majority-Black districts, the DOJ withdrew its position supporting the Pelican State’s new map. The DOJ recently filed a statement of interest to review the conviction of Tina Peters, the former Colorado election clerk who was sentenced to nine years in prison for her role in a 2021 voting system data breach in a failed attempt to find voter fraud.
