Voting rights advocates and Massachusetts officials announced today that settlements have been reached in a three-year old federal lawsuit regarding the requirement to provide voter registration opportunities to low-income citizens who receive public assistance benefits.
The lawsuit, filed in May 2012, was brought by New England United for Justice (NEU4J) and the New England Area Conference of the NAACP (NAACP-NEAC) against the Secretary of the Commonwealth (SOC), the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA), the Office of Medicaid (MassHealth), and the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS). It alleged that the state’s public assistance agencies were failing to provide voter registration services that are mandated by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The NVRA is the same law that requires voter registration services to be provided when a citizen applies for a driver’s license.
The Department of Transitional Assistance, which runs the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly Food Stamps) and cash assistance, settled with the plaintiffs in March of this year. Today’s settlement agreements were between the plaintiffs and the remaining defendants in the lawsuit. In particular:
- MassHealth has agreed to provide a voter registration application and offer assistance to each individual who applies, renews, or changes his or her address in connection with Medicaid benefits. MassHealth will also provide regular training for its employees and monitor NVRA compliance.
- The online health benefits application jointly used by MassHealth and the Massachusetts Health Connector will be re-programmed to provide voter registration opportunities.
- The SOC has agreed to review DTA and MassHealth voter registration policies and training materials, participate in training, and monitor registration activities of each of the public assistance agencies. The resulting voter registration data will be posted regularly on the SOC’s website.
- EOHHS, which oversees DTA, MassHealth and several other agencies with voter registration responsibilities, has agreed to send an annual notice to each such agency, reminding it of its NVRA responsibilities.
In the summer of 2012, in anticipation of the November 2012 federal elections, the parties entered into an interim agreement that yielded at least 39,000 voter registration applications from DTA’s low-income clients over a four-month period. In contrast, in the four years prior to the lawsuit, DTA clients filled out only 3,100 voter registration applications.
The plaintiffs were represented by public policy organizations Demos, Project Vote, Boston Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, as well as the law firm Ropes & Gray. Today, these lawyers, along with the Attorney General’s Office, filed papers in federal court asking Judge Denise Casper to dismiss the case based on the settlement agreements and to retain jurisdiction to resolve any disputes over the defendants’ compliance with the settlement agreements. The case will end when Judge Casper rules on the request.
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