Equal Citizens Foundation

Equal Citizens Foundation (ECF) conducts litigation, public education, and research to promote equal political rights and reform institutions that currently defeat that equality. We aim to orient the present anger about our government felt by citizens from across the political spectrum towards this inequality, and build recognition of the urgent need to address these systemic flaws in order to restore our democracy.

Equal Citizens will make this legal fact of unequal representation in our democracy politically salient. Through a series of interventions that both demonstrate this inequality and work to fix it, we will engage within each of these four areas, recruiting citizens motivated by the injustice of each. Once within our tent, we then work to spread recognition among our followers about the connections among these four flaws, so as to recruit them to fight this more general inequality.

ECF’s current litigation projects focus on problem areas (1) and (2):

(1) Fixing our presidential election system
a. Litigation challenging winner-take-all in the Electoral College (the Equal Votes project)
b. Litigation resolving the constitutional freedom of electors (the Electors Freedom project)

(2) Fixing our campaign finance system with a litigation to end super PACs (the End Super PACs project)

ECF’s President Lawrence Lessig directs the litigation strategy for all three projects. Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Professor Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

ECF’s litigation director Jason Harrow executes the litigation plan and coordinates with outside counsels who are working on our litigation projects. Mr. Harrow is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where he won the Ames Moot Court Competition and was the President of Harvard Law's chapter of the American Constitution Society. He was previously an assistant solicitor general in the Office of the New York Attorney General, and he has argued 15 appeals.

The three litigation projects are currently being processed in different levels of the federal court system.

Equal Votes
Plaintiffs in the four Equal Votes cases will have answered motions to dismiss in each of the four jurisdictions by the end of July 2018. We are hopeful for a quick resolution in the district courts, so we can move the case to the courts of appeals.

Electors Freedom
As of July 2018, we have appealed the administrative determination affirming the fine against the WA State electors, and are now on emergency appeal to the WA State Supreme Court. In CO, the District Court has granted a motion by the state to dismiss. We are currently appealing that decision to the 10th Circuit.

End Super PACs
In February 2018, we filed a complaint on behalf of three Alaska citizens, charging that election commission failed to enforce its super PAC law against two Alaskan super PACs. The commission rejected our complaint citing SpeechNow. That determination is currently under review.