Free and Fair Elections — Week of Mar 3, 2025

On March 6, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14230—Addressing Risks From Perkins Coie LLP, directing federal agencies to cut ties with a specific private law firm and require other government contractors to disclose any business relationships with it. The order justifies these actions in part by citing the firm's past legal work challenging voter ID laws, describing that litigation as "undermining democratic elections."

This might matter because the order treats lawsuits challenging voting restrictions—a routine and legally protected form of advocacy—as a reason for government punishment. If law firms face federal retaliation for representing clients who challenge election laws in court, fewer attorneys may be willing to take on voting rights cases, which could affect the legal system's ability to check potentially discriminatory restrictions on who can vote and how.

There are alternative explanations worth considering. Most plausibly, the order may be primarily focused on the firm's involvement in the 2016 Fusion GPS controversy and other alleged misconduct, with the voter ID references being secondary justification rather than the main target. Additionally, the government does have broad authority over its own contracting decisions, and restricting one firm's access to federal contracts is not the same as banning voting rights litigation. However, the order's specific language singling out challenges to voter ID laws as harmful to democracy goes beyond typical contracting disputes and sends a signal to any firm engaged in similar work.

Limitations: This analysis is based on a single executive order from a low-volume week. How the order will be implemented—or whether courts will block it—remains to be seen. This is AI-generated analysis, not a finding of fact.