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"Proposals to prohibit federal immigration agents from masking their faces have gained new life in states — thanks in part to a court ruling that blocked the nation’s first such law, in California."

"A California law aimed at prohibiting ICE agents from wearing masks was struck down in court earlier this year. The carve-out that led to the successful Trump administration challenge came out of negotiations between the offices of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Scott Wiener. Newsom and Wiener have said they were proud to pass the first attempt at an ICE mask ban, and efforts to pass a new version are underway."

"If you're skeptical of states going after ICE agents in particular, ... there's a really strong originalist case that states have this power."

As part of President Trump’s efforts to expand federal control over the country’s historically state-run election infrastructure, the U.S. Department of Justice has demanded copies of states’ complete voter registration lists, including voters’ highly sensitive data like birthdates, partial Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers. The Justice Department has filed federal lawsuits against 29 states (so far) and Washington, D.C., seeking orders compelling these jurisdictions to turn over their data. This tracker monitors the Justice Department’s lawsuits.

"Derek Clinger, senior staff attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School, pointed to Carter’s comprehensive discussion of the 1960 Civil Rights Act (CRA), and the DOJ rarely-invoked demands under it for access to voter registration records. “That’ll be the most read part by the other courts,” Clinger said, noting that the agency failed to provide a written basis for the record demands — a reason for believing the states were acting unlawfully — as required by the CRA."

"States have broad power to regulate within their borders unless the U.S. Constitution bars it, but many of these laws raise novel issues that courts will have to sort out, said Harrison Stark, senior counsel with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School."

"Bridget Lavender, a staff attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative, said LA County could still pursue its own case, even if the pending state laws are struck down. That could lead to what she described as 'a situation where we have different outcomes between the two cases.'

The U.S. Justice Department has demanded states' complete, unredacted vote registration lists. States have mostly declined to provide their full, unredacted voter registration lists. This report examines the questions raised by the federal government's demands about the long-established authority of states to administer elections and the scope of the federal government’s role in the voter registration process.

As the federal government carries out aggressive immigration raids in major cities across the U.S., state officials are facing off with the federal government over a centuries-old question: When can states prosecute federal officials for violating state criminal law?

In a case concerning whether a federal statute, the Westfall Act, precludes all state-law damages actions against federal officials, even those based on federal constitutional violations, the State Democracy Research Initiative filed an amicus brief explaining that the U.S. Constitution’s structure envisions an active role for state laws and institutions in redressing the constitutional violations of federal actors, and, historically, state-level causes of action were the primary way for individuals to recover for injuries caused by such actors.