In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential contest, as Donald Trump attacked mail-in voting and spread misinformation about widespread voter fraud, Public Interest Legal Foundation founder and president J. Christian Adams had a message for the activists at a closed-door gathering at the Council for National Policy.
“Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth,” Adams told the group, according to The Washington Post.
Over the next six years, his group has worked to help construct a de facto national voter roll database that they use to inform “aggressive litigation.” The organization, which describes its mission as preserving “election integrity,” has targeted election maps in Black and Brown communities.
Between 2020 and 2026, the group was instrumental in lodging at least 44 lawsuits, ranging from legal battles over voter data in 18 states and the District of Columbia to filing in seven cases involving election map challenges, an Emancipator investigation found. To track the suits, The Emancipator examined roughly 90 court cases involving the foundation and cross-compared them with entries in research platforms, legal databases, and news coverage.
The Emancipator reached out several times to Public Interest Legal Foundation for comment, but did not receive a response.
Public Interest Legal Foundation is part of a network of well-funded groups that are undermining voting rights by pushing the limits of election rules and demanding voter information ahead of the midterm elections.
Court documents also show that Public Interest Legal Foundation has been active in “amicus curiae” filings, offering opinions to the court about ongoing cases. Through those filings, the group supported Trump’s executive order that sought to end birthright citizenship.
The legal group worked on a lawsuit noted for supporting Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and they defended an election map in Tarrant County, Texas, from accusations it diluted Black and Latino voting power.
They also defended or supported gerrymandered maps and election restrictions in Alabama, Florida, Galveston and Laredo, Texas, Kentucky, and Georgia, including ones that were regarded as racist by civil rights groups.
A case involving the group sought to prevent public school students in Howard County, Maryland, one of the most diverse districts in the state, from voting for a student school board member. Roughly seven out of 10 students in Howard County Public Schools are Black or Brown, according to data from the Howard County Public School System.
The foundation had revenue just shy of $5 million in 2024, coming almost entirely from contributions, according to the most recent available 990 filing pulled via ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer. Roughly 11% of the group’s contributions came from a single donor, according to an independent audit of their finances dated to 2024.
Their donors include familiar names in big money.
For example, between 2015 and 2021, the foundation received $2.4 million from notable dark money groups, per OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks financial influence. That money came from organizations such as DonorsTrust, a Virginia-based nonprofit that’s been called a “dark money ATM,” and a fund linked to The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a Wisconsin-based operator with nearly a billion dollars in assets.
Critics say Public Interest Legal Foundation’s actions contribute to a larger effort to restrict voting access for Black and Brown communities.
“We’ve seen reductions in polling places, strict ID requirements, an allowance for hunting and fishing licenses to count for voter ID, while at the same time not allowing student licenses, student IDs, or Tribal IDs to count. We’ve seen tighter registration deadlines. We’ve seen an effort to stop same-day registration; we’ve seen reductions or eliminations of ballot drop boxes for folks who are voting early,” said Tom Lopach, president of Voter Participation Center, a nonprofit that tries to expand voter registration among Black and Brown communities.
“Everyone is singing, often, the same songbook, and they are all doing the work that, unfortunately, is all too common and easily understood as a long-term right-wing effort to make it harder for people of color to participate in our democracy,” he said.
It’s as important as ever for communities of color to register and vote, he said.
A history of targeting voters of color
Public Interest Legal Foundation’s tactics are self-consciously aggressive.
In 2018, the organization was sued in Virginia for breaking the “Anti-KKK Act of 1871” — a Reconstruction-era, antiracist voter intimidation law — when it falsely accused people of voting illegally, in an effort allegedly targeted at Latino communities. The foundation had “doxxed” those voters by posting their addresses, phone numbers and even Social Security numbers in splashy reports that it promoted.
The group settled.
In May of last year, the group turned the “Anti-KKK” law against anti-Trump activists when they sued a group of anonymous individuals they claimed were intimidating Trump supporters in Philadelphia.
The suit appears to be still ongoing.
This week, Virginia launched a permanent section for protecting voting rights.
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones cited “the continued erosion of the federal Voting Rights Act, Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on our democracy, and his administration’s efforts to impede access to the ballot,” in a press release announcing the office.
Other states with Voting Rights Acts typically perform this work through their civil rights units, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The Emancipator reached out to ask the attorney general’s office whether there’s been an increase in voting rights attacks from Trump-aligned groups in the lead-up to the midterms in that state. The office did not respond to that question.
The Supreme Court’s decision in April in “Louisiana v. Callais,” which “eviscerated” the Voting Rights Act — a hallmark law of the Civil Rights era meant to combat racist voter suppression — was a boon to the organization’s crusade. In that case, the high court struck down a Louisiana election map drawn to preserve Black voter power.
Public Interest Legal Foundation filed in support of that Louisiana case.
The decision led to a new understanding of what counts as “racial gerrymandering” and has emboldened anti-democracy groups to challenge election maps and go after voter data.
The Emancipator investigation found that, since the Supreme Court decision, Public Interest Legal Foundation has had at least two cases challenging maps in Denver and Illinois, both Democrat-controlled areas. The cases seek to overturn redistricting designed to keep votes from communities of color from getting diluted. Since 2020, the group has tried to involve itself with at least 12 cases related to election maps.
This year, buoyed by the high court redistricting win, the group turned its eye toward local school board elections. These are often determined by voters in districts drawn to help ensure representation reflects the communities lawmakers hail from.
That includes an ongoing lawsuit filed in July challenging a school board map in Denver, Colorado. The dispute stemmed from the school board’s map, unveiled in 2024, which sought to ensure the historically Black neighborhoods of Five Points and Whittier – long represented by a Black school board member – remained in their current district. Another district, represented by a Latino school board member, expanded to include more neighborhoods.
Public Interest Legal Foundation pounced.
“[Denver Public Schools] intentionally and brazenly drew district boundaries to ensure Black and Latino racial majorities achieved race-based representation over Denver’s increasing White population,” their lawsuit alleged.
The complaint argues that the new interpretation of the law “prohibit[s] any consideration of race in the drafting of school district lines.”
But regardless of whether the map was drawn defensibly, “that statement of the law is just flatly untrue,” wrote Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, in an email to The Emancipator.
“The Constitution does say that when race is the predominant reason for moving particular people in or out of districts – when race subjugates all other reasons for drawing lines in a particular place – then there has to be a really good reason for that, and after Callais, it’s going to be a lot more difficult to show that compliance with the Voting Rights Act was a really good reason,” he wrote.
The foundation’s efforts are unfolding amid broader concerns over stepped-up efforts to disenfranchise voters.
“When you talk about the gerrymandered maps, what the maps are attempting to do is to literally split black voting power,” said Andrea Miller, executive director of Center for Common Ground, which describes itself as a Black and women-led voting rights organization. “Most states have at least one historically black or Hispanic district.”
From election fraud claims to demanding voter rolls
In the lead-up to the Capitol Riots, Public Interest Legal Foundation was among the groups “at the helm of efforts pushing unfounded and disproven claims of voter fraud around the 2020 election,” according to an investigation by OpenSecrets.
More recently, using the strategy that’s become its hallmark, the foundation has pressed for voter information in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Oregon, Maine, Minnesota, Michigan, New Mexico, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin as well as Boston, Alameda County in California and Maui and Kaua’i Counties in Hawaii, The Emancipator found.
In court filings, the organization argues that going after state voter registration lists deepens election “transparency.”
Access to voter information, even in states where the group is not based, helps to “to evaluate how and whether other states or local governments are complying with list maintenance obligations and other best practices,” according to an amended complaint in a suit that sought voter data in Maine.
They also claim to have unearthed voter fraud, improving election “integrity.”
But critics characterize Public Interest Legal Foundation as an “anti-voting group” that’s turned a pro-voting law into a way to purge voter rolls and intimidate voters.
“In the last six-eight years, it sure feels like efforts have been made to determine who gets to vote, rather than to try and appeal to a majority of voters,” Lopach, of Voter Participation Center, said of the broader trend.
Some argue those “voter fraud” claims are shaky, as well.
For instance, an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice found that the organization’s claim to have identified 616 noncitizen voters on New Jersey’s voter rolls was “undermined” by the foundation’s own paper, which in fact showed there was very little fraud. The evidence was “sloppy,” and the effort was really meant to change laws to further restrict where community organizations could go to register voters, the analysis concluded.
Ahead of the midterm elections, the group’s efforts may have helped buttress the Trump administration’s attempts to hold its grip on power.
The group has successfully forced Arizona, Oregon and New Mexico to release voter information in recent months.
After losing a court case related to its efforts to make Hawaii release voter information, the group asked the Supreme Court to step in and determine whether it’s entitled to voter records under the National Voter Registration Act.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court declined to take up a similar case over Pennsylvania’s voter rolls.
Deep Trump administration ties
The group’s strategy also dovetails with the Trump administration’s push to reshape how elections are handled, including strict new voter registration restrictions and rules meant to cut down on mail-in voting.
The Trump administration revamped a controversial Homeland Security tool containing information on citizens, turning it into a system to verify voter eligibility on state lists. Use of the program is voluntary for states and it is unlikely to be used in the upcoming midterms, experts say.
Some states have willingly handed over voter data. But the administration has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia in an attempt to get its hands on voter data, according to a review by CBS News. They’ve lost the vast majority of those cases.
American federal agencies have “abandoned” civil rights duties, according to the nonprofit Human Rights Watch.
In 2020, Trump appointed Adams, the organization’s president, to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an eight-member federal body that conducts civil rights investigations. Adams’ term lasts until 2030.
Around the country, the Trump administration has used its second term to weaken federal civil rights safeguards, force civil servants of color out of the government, and punish private and public institutions that intentionally hire workers of color.
During his tenure in a turbulent period for civil rights, Adams has attempted to force out Democrat members of the commission, claiming that Trump has “fired” them.
Others connected to the law group also landed jobs in agencies including the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. That included Maureen Riordan, who led the Justice Department’s voting rights section until earlier this year and Lauren Bis, who is now being cited as a White House spokesperson by press.
Riordan, during her tenure, was copied on letters sent by the foundation in its attempts to gain access to voter rolls, per Democracy Docket reporting.
Although Public Interest Legal Foundation isn’t the largest group around, concerns over voter intimidation and institutional attacks by the Trump administration, including the threat of immigration agents at the polls, reflect a much-changed environment from before 2020, their critics allege.
Critics perceive Public Interest Legal Foundation as part of a concerted effort, contributing to attempts to restrict voter access and get voter data.
“There is definitely a veil there that hides a much larger infrastructure and a much larger coordinated effort across organizations,” Juan Proaño, CEO of League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), told The Emancipator. A Virginia chapter of LULAC brought the “Anti-KKK” suit against Public Interest Foundation in 2018.
Paired with a strategy of gerrymandering, suppression and intimidation meant to consolidate power, it means that a lot is at stake in this upcoming election, they argue.
For instance, documents acquired by the legal organization Democracy Forward purportedly show that immigration officers have obtained 48.4 million records in a “strategic line of effort” to open voter fraud investigations.
“What this president has brought forward — not just in these last two years but in these last 12 years since he first ran for office — is giving air, creating space to basically dismantle what has been the second reconstruction [represented by the Voting Rights Act and the larger Civil Rights Movement of last century], and there is no other way to frame it than that,” Proaño said.
“It’s become a real threat to our society, a real threat to democracy, and as it relates to Latinos and Black communities, a real threat to fair representation.”
