Our Work

After high-level Trump administration officials said they might send armed officers to the polls during the upcoming midterm elections, and after months of administration efforts to wrest control of some aspects of voting from state officials and limit how people vote, there’s a lot of fear that armed federal officials will disrupt voting and even seize ballots. A number of civil rights and voter advocacy groups and labor unions have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration to bar any such presence, with one suit claiming that “threatening messaging and violent enforcement actions” by administration officials “have created a climate in which voters, especially voters of color, are intimidated and fearful of engaging in the democratic process.”

Last month, the California Supreme Court rebuked a local sheriff’s unprecedented seizure of roughly 650,000 ballots cast in the state’s November 2025 special election. The decisions, Bonta v. Bianco and Cervantes v. Bianco, both held that the sheriff had to follow the state attorney general’s directions to pause his investigation and that the seizure violated the state’s laws for securely handling and storing cast ballots. The court also ordered the ballots returned to local election officials.

On October 2, the State Democracy Research Initiative’s faculty co-directors, Miriam Seifter and Rob Yablon, filed an amicus brief with 6 other legal scholars in United States v. Commonwealth of Virginia, a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The appeal concerns whether the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution bars a Virginia statute that directs state and local law enforcement agencies to terminate, or renegotiate, their voluntary 287(g) agreements with federal immigration authorities. In the proceedings below, the district court concluded that Virginia’s law “regulated” the United States, in violation of the judge-made doctrine of “intergovernmental immunity.”

In the upcoming November 2026 election, Wisconsin voters will be asked to vote on whether the Wisconsin Constitution should be amended to add a section to the Wisconsin Declaration of Rights, prohibiting the government from operating programs that discriminate against or give preference to individuals on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, or national origin. The authors of the proposed amendment describe it as restricting diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) programs.

In the upcoming November 2026 election, Wisconsin voters will be asked whether to amend Article I, Section 18, of the Wisconsin Constitution, which protects religious freedom and bars religious preferences. The proposed amendment would expressly prohibit the government from closing or forbidding gatherings in places of worship in response to an emergency. Legislators were motivated to introduce this amendment in response to restrictions placed on churches and other places of worship during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

In the upcoming November 2026 election, Wisconsin voters will be asked whether to amend Article V, Section 10(1)(c), of the Wisconsin Constitution to ban the governor's use of the partial veto power to increase or allow the increase of taxes or fees. Legislators introduced the partial veto amendment in response to Governor Tony Evers’s “400-year veto,” which struck words, digits, and dashes to allow localities to raise increased school funding through the 2425 school year, instead of just through 2025. 

In the upcoming November 2026 election, Wisconsin voters will be asked to vote on three proposed amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution. These amendments will be on the ballot alongside a contentious race for governor, state legislative races that will determine control of the state legislature, and at least one closely watched federal House race that may decide which party controls the House after the midterms, among others. In a series of explainers, we describe the proposed amendments, their backgrounds, the national context, the arguments for and against the amendments, and the likely impacts.

The Trump Administration has repeatedly suggested that it could try to deploy ICE, the FBI, or troops to voting sites during upcoming federal elections, even though federal law criminally prohibits sending armed agents to the polls. Even if the federal government declines to enforce those laws, this Report highlights some ways for states to potentially halt any federal deployment in real-time: specifically, suits for injunctive relief under the Administrative Procedure Act, and/or an ultra vires or non-statutory suit. The Report walks through the various components of a potential lawsuit, explaining how states may rely on federal courts’ broad authority to halt illegal government action through their equitable powers, even if the only directly applicable federal statutes are criminal prohibitions.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court's 2025–26 term unfolded largely outside the political spotlight. However, the 2026–27 term may not be as quiet, with two redistricting challenges to the state's congressional maps and a case that could revisit the court's approach to statutory interpretation.

Last month, New York Governor Kathy Hochul stood alongside New York Attorney General Letitia James and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at a press conference in Manhattan. The purpose: to announce $7.25 million in new legal aid for unaccompanied immigrant children and to reaffirm a state law barring local police from formal cooperation agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The event was an illustration of a broader pattern in modern American federalism: a governor using her office’s visibility, funding authority, and legal tools to push back against perceived federal overreach or abuses of power.