Protect Democracy

In 2016, Protect Democracy was co-founded by Ian Bassin, Justin Florence, and Emily Loeb, who served as lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office under former President Barack Obama.[14] In forming the organization, Protect Democracy's founders consulted with political scientists who later became members of the group's board of advisers, including Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.[15][16][17]

Bassin, a former White House associate counsel, serves as the executive director of Protect Democracy.[18]

Protect Democracy advocates for maintaining a strong separation between the White House and the Justice Department.[19] In 2020, the group collected letters from hundreds of DOJ alumni, calling for former Attorney General William Barr to step down.[20][21] The DOJ alumni also claimed the Mueller report presented enough evidence to charge former President Donald Trump with obstruction of justice.[22]

Protect Democracy has criticized both Democrats and Republicans over resisting congressional oversight.[23][24] In 2021, the group represented 66 former members of Congress, including two dozen Republicans, challenging Trump’s efforts to block the January 6th Select Committee from accessing his presidential records.[25] During the 2020 election, Bassin urged then-candidate Joe Biden to reverse course after declaring he would defy a subpoena if called to testify in Trump’s first impeachment.[26] Biden eventually backed off his comments.[27]

Following the January 6th Capitol riots, Protect Democracy represented Capitol Police officers suing Trump under the Klan Act for his role in inciting the crowd.[28][29] In February 2022, the Court denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the case.[30] In an amicus brief filed in the case, the DOJ rejected Trump’s claim to have blanket immunity from civil liability for his conduct in office.[31][32] Protect Democracy also represented Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman in a case against former Trump aides and allies, accusing them of intimidating and retaliating against him for testifying against Trump during his first impeachment.[33][34]

Protect Democracy’s litigation has advocated on behalf of First Amendment rights. In 2019, the organization filed a lawsuit on behalf of Reverend Kaji Douša, challenging a previously secret Department of Homeland Security (DHS) surveillance operation that targeted activists, journalists, lawyers, and faith leaders, all of whom spoke out against the Trump administration.[35][36] In 2023, a federal judge in California ruled that U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the DHS violated Douša’s rights by retaliating against her for ministering to migrants and refugees.[37][38]

In 2019, Protect Democracy also convened the nonpartisan "National Task Force on Election Crises," a cross-ideological group of more than 50 experts on elections, security, public health, and other areas.[39][40][41] The Task Force issues analyses and reports, holding press briefings on how the electoral system is supposed to work for the purpose of building resiliency against efforts to subvert the electoral process.[42][43][44]

In 2021, along with the States United Democracy Center and Law Forward, Protect Democracy issued an initial report on state legislative attempts that threaten to subvert elections.[45][46] It has subsequently released updates to the report.[47][48][49] Collaborating with the University of Chicago's Center for Effective Government, Protect Democracy experts have hosted two “Rethinking Our Democracy” series in The Washington Post, proposing institutional reforms to strengthen American democracy.[50][51] In response to the federal and state investigations against Trump, the group issued a guide seeking to tell the difference between politicized investigations and normal, appropriate efforts by law enforcement.[52][53]

Protect Democracy developed the software VoteShield, which uses publicly available data to track changes to voter rolls, identifying potentially suspicious irregularities.[54][55] The group also launched "Law for Truth," which uses defamation law to impose accountability on those who spread election disinformation.[56][57] Law for Truth has brought lawsuits on behalf of election workers in Georgia and a postmaster in Pennsylvania, who suffered online and offline threats to their safety due to false media stories about their alleged involvement in election fraud.[58][59][60] Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Georgia election workers in the cases against Rudy Giuliani, The Gateway Pundit, and the Hoft brothers, were awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for their defense of the 2020 election.[61] In July 2023, Giuliani conceded that the statements he made about Freeman and Moss were false.[62]

Protect Democracy has written amicus briefs focused on executive overreach in relation to two of the Supreme Court’s cases involving deliberations over presidential emergency powers: A Trump administration migration restriction in Arizona v. Mayorkas and the Biden administration’s student debt cancellation program in Biden v. Nebraska.[63] The group argued that both cases together represented an opportunity to “[propose] a standard for how the Court should consider challenges to executive actions based on congressional delegations of emergency powers.”[64]

Protect Democracy has challenged Republican and Democratic officials over claims that they were misusing their offices to improperly interfere in elections. In 2018, Protect Democracy sued then-Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, seeking his recusal from overseeing a recount in an election in which he was also a candidate.[65][66] The group also filed a lawsuit against then-Florida Governor Rick Scott, claiming the Constitution sets limits on an elected official’s ability to exercise governmental powers over their own election.[67][68] Protect Democracy later challenged Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, a Democrat, for appearing to use his governmental position to advance his own candidacy for governor.[69][70]

The organization has also pushed back on efforts to impinge the right to vote.[71] In 2022, the group filed a lawsuit against individuals and organizations conspiring to intimidate Arizona voters who were using drop boxes to deliver their ballots in the 2022 election.[72][73] Days later, a federal court issued an order barring the defendants in the case from confronting, photographing, and doxing voters, in addition to carrying guns and wearing body armor near drop boxes.[74][75]

Protect Democracy advocated for passage of the Electoral Count Act (ECA), which was passed into law in 2022.[76][77][78] According to Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent, the group “wrote one of the earliest blueprints on how to reform [the] ECA.”[79]

In 2023, Protect Democracy was named as one of five winners of the 2023 Skoll Award for Social Innovation by the Skoll Foundation.[80] That year, it was one of the groups that filed a lawsuit challenging Virginia’s lifetime ban on voting for anyone convicted of any felony.[81] The suit argues that Virginia’s disenfranchisement provision violates a little-known federal law: The Virginia Readmission Act, a Reconstruction-era statute designed to protect the newly-enshrined rights, including the right to vote, of formerly enslaved citizens.[82] In another 2023 lawsuit filed on behalf of Penguin Random House, PEN America, and individuals in Florida, Protect Democracy worked with Ballard Spahr to challenge the constitutionality of the Escambia County School District’s removal and restriction of books discussing race, racism, or LGBTQ issues from public school libraries.[83][84]