Senior Counsel, Senior Staff Attorney, Staff Attorney, Voting Rights Project

Senior Counsel, Senior Staff Attorney, Staff Attorney, Voting Rights Project

New York, New York, United States;
Washington, District of Columbia, United States

The ACLU seeks applicants for the full‑time position of Staff Attorney, Senior Staff Attorney or Senior Counsel in the Voting Rights Project of the ACLU’s National office in New York, NY or Washington, D.C. This is a hybrid role that has in‑office requirements of two (2) days per week or eight (8) days per month.

Established in 1965, VRP has worked to protect the gains in political participation won by voters of color since passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). Since its inception, the Voting Rights Project has litigated hundreds of voting rights cases, and has aggressively and successfully challenged efforts to suppress voting or to dilute minority voting strength.

The Project’s mission is to build and defend an accessible, inclusive, and equitable democracy free from racial discrimination. The Project has three principles: (1) all Americans should be eligible to vote; (2) voting should be free and easy; and (3) all people should count equally.

The Project employs an integrated advocacy approach, combining legislative advocacy, public education, and litigation, and has active cases in over a dozen states. Its recent docket has included:

• more than 60 lawsuits to protect voters during the 2020 and 2024 elections;
• a pair of cases in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the first Trump Administration's discriminatory census policies:
  Department of Commerce v. New York (successfully challenging an attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census), and New York Immigration Coalition v. Trump (challenging the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from the population count used to apportion the House of Representatives);
• challenges to discriminatory congressional and state legislative maps, including three recent cases in the U.S. Supreme Court:
  Louisiana v. Callais (2025), defending Louisiana's congressional map, which contains two majority‑Black districts in compliance with the Voting Rights Act;
  Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP (2024), challenging South Carolina’s congressional map as an unconstitutional and starkly racially gerrymandered map; and Allen v. Milligan (2023), successfully challenging Alabama’s congressional map as unlawfully diluting the Black voting power under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act;
• challenges to voter purges and documentary proof of citizenship laws;
• challenges to other new legislation restricting voting rights in states like Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, and Texas.

The ACLU Voting Rights Project is currently litigating voter suppression and minority vote dilution cases in over a dozen states, from coast to coast, in every region of the country.

This position is part of a collective bargaining unit. It is represented by ACLU Staff United (ASU).

Reporting to the Deputy Director of the Voting Rights Project
, the Staff Attorney, Senior Staff Attorney or Senior Counsel will be responsible for developing and litigating voting rights cases in state and federal cases.

• Participate in litigation of constitutional and statutory cases on a wide range of voting rights issues including researching and drafting pleadings, briefs and legal memoranda, engaging in discovery and motion practice, and conducting evidentiary hearings and oral arguments in the trial and appellate courts
• Participate in analyzing legislation for potential litigation
• Develop new cases, non‑litigation advocacy projects and identify and work with potential plaintiffs and witnesses
• Work with and advise ACLU state affiliates
• Provide technical assistance and expert legal advice to cooperating attorneys, and others who seek assistance on voting rights litigation, legislation, and advocacy
• Serve as a resource for ACLU legislative, policy and campaign work and advancing ACLU policy goals through public education, organizing and participating in coalitions
• Engage in public speaking and articulating ACLU views to a variety of audiences
• Collaborate with staff across the organization, including in other…