In late March, a federal judge ruled that the Federal Election Commission had ignored the law and improperly allowed some outside groups to shield their donors from required disclosure. The decision ordered that secret-money groups running “electioneering communications” — independent ads run within 30 days of federal primaries or within 60 days of federal general elections that mention candidates but do not expressly advocate for or against them — must identify all donors contributing over $1,000 bankrolling their efforts. An appeals court refused to stay the ruling.

Today, the Federal Election Commission announced that it will retroactively implement the ruling, until such time as the ruling is overturned:

Effective March 30, 2012, persons making disbursements for electioneering communications should report “the name and address of each donor who donated an amount aggregating $1,000 or more to the person making the disbursement, aggregating since the first day of the preceding calendar year.”

While this would appear to be a victory for disclosure, a review of the new electioneering communication reports filed since that time reveals that outside groups have stopped making these types of decisions entirely. Dark money groups like Crossroads GPS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that had previously spent heavily on electioneering communications have instead circumvented the ruling by running “independent expenditures” that are more explicitly for or against federal candidates and, ironically, do not require donor disclosure.

The one outside group that has reported a new electioneering communication since that March 30 starting point was a Utah-based 501(c)(4) committee called Freedom Path. Its $26,940 expenditure praising Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Mitt Romney was reported on April 5. As such, it appears the group will have to amend its filings to identify every donor who gave $1,000 or more in 2012.

J. Scott Bensing of Freedom Path told ThinkProgress that the group would have to consult with their legal counsel before making a statement on whether it intends to comply with the new rule.

The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a sex-discrimination complaint on Wednesday against the Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry (ABCCM). According to the complaint, which was filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, the ABCCM, which “is a cooperative ministry of churches in Asheville and Buncombe County, North Carolina that provides assistance and services to the homeless, veterans and families in poverty,” has been excluding female veterans from the job training services offered to men.

The ABCCM receives federal funding specifically for its “Veterans Employment & Training Services,” which self-purportedly provides “skills assessment, training, job placement and coaching for those seeking new career level jobs to break the bonds of homelessness and poverty.” But, Emily Bagby, one of the female Army veterans represented by the Law Center, alleges that ABCCM had gender-segregated training programs that offered women only poor quality services.

Apparently, women were only allowed to participate in job training courses intending to create the perfect housewife. A press release from the Law Center states that:

Bagby wasn’t allowed to take the courses that actually might help her find a job. She discovered, in fact, that the ministry didn’t allow female veterans to take the same classes offered to men, such as truck driving, culinary arts and training for “green” jobs. Instead, the women were offered training in such things as knitting, art therapy, yoga, meditation, how to de-clutter your room, self-esteem and Bible study.

The Law Center also noted that while “male veterans are provided 24 different job training programs at their Veterans Restoration Quarters, while female veterans are offered 16 different “personal skill-building” programs at the Steadfast House, the organization’s housing facility for women.”

According to the press release, female veterans are already four times more likely to become homeless than their male counterparts, a number that is undoubtedly caused at least in part by the terrible job training female veterans are apparently receiving.

– Nina Liss-Schultz

Taking a break from defending his state’s restrictive voter ID law in court, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson spoke at a Heritage Foundation panel on Thursday regarding the dire need to prevent the threat of voter fraud. To illustrate, he offered a hypothetical in which a man votes under a stolen identity…by using a fraudulent voter ID card:

WILSON: The ability for someone to come in and, through fraud, dilute the voting pool is very present. I want to be able to give our government the ability to combat that, to give them the tools. It is very difficult to prove a negative. If Alan Wilson goes in and uses a fraudulent voter ID card under the name of John Smith and I vote under John Smith’s name and then leave the polling place, you cannot go back in time and prove the negative. It is impossible. It is very difficult to catch somebody in the act. But I hear countless stories of people who witnessed that.

Watch it:

In Wilson’s imagined scenario, a voter uses a fake ID to cast an extra vote. But his own argument rests on the idea that the requirement to show ID at the polls is necessary to combat rampant voter fraud and identity theft. By this logic, voter ID laws would do nothing to prevent this threat.

In-person voter fraud like the type Wilson claims to prevent is extremely rare. It is so rare, in fact, that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud. Even the Supreme Court could only identify one example of in-person voter fraud in the past 143 years in their 2009 decision upholding a voter ID law.

By contrast, a recent Brennan Center report found that nearly 500,000 voters — mostly low-income and minority individuals — in the ten states with voter ID laws stand to be disenfranchised.

Wilson has sued the Department of Justice for blocking South Carolina’s voter ID law, arguing, “The changes have neither the purpose nor will they have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority.”

According to the ACLU’s estimate, 180,000 voters will be affected by the South Carolina law, with minority voters hit hardest by the new requirements.

This isn’t the first time Wilson’s hypotheticals have fallen flat. After he claimed over 900 dead voters cast ballots in South Carolina, an investigation by the State Election Commission found no evidence to back him up. Wilson has continued to insist that the threat of dead voters is real, and repeated the statistic at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday.

On Thursday, House Republicans criticized the Justice Department for challenging voter ID laws. The critical lawmakers believe that DOJ is acting in a partisan manner and that DOJ’s actions show that the Obama Administration is more concerned with winning in November than protecting against election fraud.

DOJ denies that they are motivated by any partisan concerns. Under the Voting Rights Act, DOJ has challenged voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina.

In both states, Republican-controlled legislatures passed laws requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification in order to vote. The Justice Department indicated this week it also is looking at whether Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 law for ensuring minorities’ right to vote.

“Our philosophy has been very straight forward,” Perez told a House Judiciary subcommittee that Franks chairs. “We want to enforce laws. There’s a robust debate in this country, and we think we need to continue to have that debate and we do our level best to ensure that every eligible voter casts their vote and has access to the ballot.”

The criticism by Republican lawmakers is misplaced and misguided. Republican Reps. Steve King (IA) and Trent Franks (AZ) both claimed to be worried about voter fraud. King went so far as to say that “[w]e’re seeing voter fraud that’s pretty prevalent out there.” But there is no evidence that voter fraud is a problem. In fact there were only nine instances of possible in-person voter fraud between 2000 and 2007, and it is more likely that an individual will get struck by lightning than they will commit voter fraud. In the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against Pennsylvania’s voter ID law, the state formally acknowledged that no in-person voter fraud has occurred in Pennsylvania and they don’t expect any to occur in November. While voter fraud is a myth, voter ID laws do disenfranchise voters. In Pennsylvania alone, more than 750,000 eligible voters may be disenfranchised by the state’s new law.

While voter fraud is incredibly rare and therefore unlikely to swing the election in the Democrats’ favor, voter ID laws benefit Republicans because they disproportionately affect voters who are more likely to vote democratic. Poor, minority, and elderly voters are especially likely to fall into the 11 percent of eligible American voters who lack sufficient ID. Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman (R) and Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) both have said that voter ID laws will help Mitt Romney win in November. The ten states that have put voter ID requirements in place represent 127 electoral votes and are led by Republicans in both the legislature and the governorship.

–Alex Brown

On her Facebook page last week, Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball) explained her view that schools would be acting wisely and constitutionally if they start forcing students to read Christian Proverbs:

Formal prayer has been taken out of our schools. How about this idea? Read from the book of Proverbs from the Bible. Proverbs is a book of wisdom. Proverbs is in the Holy Scriptures for Christians and Jews. As for other religions – the wisdom won’t do them any harm…I say have a reading out of Proverbs each day in our classrooms.

Riddle’s suggestion that forcing students to listen to Christian proverbs is constitutional is wrong. The Supreme Court held that both school-led prayer and scripture readings are unconstitutional over forty years ago because the First Amendment prohibits public schools from promoting one religion over another or over no religion at all. Though Riddle claims the Book of Proverbs is a neutral “book of Wisdom,” she later admits that the reading of the proverbs is a Christian text which “won’t harm” people of “other religions.”

This is not the first time that Riddle’s ideas have been riddled with flaws. In 2010, Riddle claimed that pregnant women were coming to the United States to have babies “with the nefarious purpose of turning them into little terrorists, who will then come back to the U.S. and do us harm.” With no facts to back her up “terrorist babies” claim, Riddle became a symbol of completely unfounded right-wing conspiracy theories.

– Ben Sherman

A group of Democratic senators are bucking President Obama and calling on Congress to pass new legislation that would establish federal restrictions on large capacity gun magazines. Identical to a separate bill introduced by amendment sponsor Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), the senators’ amendment to the Cybersecurity Act would ban the sale or transfer of large capacity feeders like magazines, belts, feed stripes and drums that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition with the exception of .22 caliber rim fire ammunition.

The amendment was introduced amid growing outcry from police and gun control advocates who want Washington to take a stand on gun control. New York City Mayor Bloomberg prominently demanded action hours after the Aurora theater shooting. The White House pledged to strengthen existing gun rules but has since clarified that the administration will not promote new legislation.

24-year-old James Holmes, the prime suspect in the Aurora shooting, purchased a 100 round drum magazine. Jared Loughner, who shot former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) in 2011 along with 18 others, used an extended magazine that held 33 bullets, and police found two more 15-round magazines in his pockets. Under the federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, these two killers could not have legally purchased these large capacity ammunition feeding devices. On the state level, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York all prohibit the sale of high capacity magazines.

In a floor speech supporting the new amendment, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attempted to find common ground with gun rights advocates, conceding that liberals in the 1980s and 90s “basically felt there was no right to bear arms,” prompting an extreme reaction from the pro-gun movement. Schumer stressed the need to disprove the misconception that “The Chuck Schumers of the world want to take away your gun, even if it’s the hunting rifle your uncle Willy gave you when you were 14.”

Calling for “rational” gun control measures, Schumer said liberals need to “make it clear once and for all that is not our goal…the Second Amendment does matter, and if you’re an average normal American citizen you have the right to bear arms.”

Rep Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), whose husband was killed in a 1993 mass shooting on the Long Island Railroad, has proposed a similar ban on high-capacity magazines in Congress but does not expect it to pass.

Yesterday Alabama filed suit in federal court asking for approval of the state’s redistricting plan. Alabama is one of nine states with a history of discrimination that the Voting Rights Act requires to get preclearance before making any changes to election procedures. Usually the states ask the Justice Department, but Alabama decided to go straight to federal court.

The suit asks a panel of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to declare that Alabama’s redistricing plan, approved by the legislature in May, does not deny or abridge the right to vote based on race or color. Alternatively, Alabama is asking the panel to decide that Section 5, the preclearance provision, of the VRA is unconstitutional.

Alabama and several other Southern states or counties need federal approval for election changes under the 1965 Voting Rights Act because of their histories of voter discrimination.

Thursday’s lawsuit from Alabama also takes aim at that requirement: If the court doesn’t grant a declaratory judgment, Alabama argues it should find the preclearance provision and its 2006 amendments unconstitutional.

Democrats in the legislature argue that the redistricting plan discriminates against voters of color in an attempt to favor Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Roger Bedford, D-Russellville, said the attorney general’s office wants to avoid the justice department’s preclearance process because the Legislature “passed a racially gerrymandered plan.”

“It’s a ridiculous waste of taxpayer’s money,” Bedford said of the lawsuit. He said Republicans are trying to circumvent the way voting changes have been approved in Alabama for the last 40 years.

Section 5 was last upheld by the Supreme Cour in 2009, but was left in a precarious position by Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority decision. Roberts noted that Section 5 is a significant intrusion on state and local rights and responsibilities and concluded that the VRA itself now “raises serious constitutional questions.” Because some of the discriminatory conditions that originally necessitated the VRA have improved, the significant burdens imposed by preclearance requirements may no longer be justified.

Two challenges to the VRA have reached the Supreme Court and are expected to be taken up next term. There have been more challenges to the Voting Rights Act in the past two years than in the previous 45

–Alex Brown