Federal judge partially strikes down Georgia ban on giving people food and drink in voting lines
Source: 11Alive WXIA-TV Atlanta
ATLANTA — In a ruling Friday, a federal judge partially struck down a ban in Georgia on giving people food and water in voting lines. The ruling by Judge J.P. Boulee in Atlanta federal court upholds a 150-foot zone outside polling places where food and water or other drinks cannot be given out.
But Georgia's 2021 voting law also established a 25-foot zone around anyone in a voting line where food and water could also not be given out - basically turning a voting line, however far it might extend from the actual polling place, into a "no-go" zone. The struck down down that part of the law, classifying "line relief activities" in the zone as First Amendment protected "expressive conduct."
The 2021 law - S.B. 202, passed by Georgia's Republican-controlled legislature in the aftermath of the outcry about former President Trump's loss in the 2020 election in Georgia - had created a misdemeanor penalty that carried with it up to a year in jail for giving out food and drink in the restricted zones.
A second, more narrow ruling Friday by Judge Boulee also struck down a provision of S.B. 202 concerning absentee ballot envelopes. The ruling will prevent the state "from rejecting absentee ballots based on any error or omission relating to the Birthdate Requirement" on absentee ballot return envelopes.
Read more: https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/georgia-voting-law-sb-202-ban-on-food-water-voting-lines-struck-down/85-9d04ca98-9b48-4b0a-9595-910080b817ed
I heard this on Nicole's program from Marc Elias who was on as a guest, and it seems like the media has just not gotten around to it with everything else going on. But yay!
Here is an excerpt if the ACLU press statement -
Federal Court Sides with Civil Rights Groups and Lifts Georgia’s Ban on Line Relief and Birthdate Requirement on Absentee Ballot Envelopes for 2024 Elections
August 18, 2023 6:00 pm
Media Contact
media@aclu.org
(212) 549-2666
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York, NY 10004
United States
ATLANTA — A federal court in the Northern District of Georgia issued rulings today in response to emergency motions filed by civil rights groups to lift restrictions put in place by Georgia’s anti-voter law, Senate Bill 202 (S.B. 202), for the 2024 elections.
The rulings blocked portions of the bill that ban Georgians from providing food and water to voters waiting in lines more than 150 feet from the polls, and that require voters to unnecessarily include their birthdate on absentee ballot envelopes.
The challenged portions of SB 202 added impediments to voting that made it harder for all Georgians to vote, particularly voters of color. The lawsuit — Sixth District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church v. Kemp — was filed in 2021.
The court sided with the plaintiffs in ruling that Georgia’s ban on providing food and water to voters waiting in lines farther than 150 feet from the polls likely violated their First Amendment right to free expression. Groups and individuals may now provide relief to voters in the 2024 elections who are waiting in long lines that stretch more than 150 feet from the polling location entrance.
The court also struck down, for purposes of the 2024 elections, the requirement that Georgia voters provide their birthdate on their absentee ballot envelope or have their ballot rejected.
(snip)
More: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-court-sides-with-civil-rights-groups-and-lifts-georgias-ban-on-line-relief-and-birthdate-requirement-on-absentee-ballot-envelopes-for-2024-elections
= new reply since forum marked as read
Marc Elias is THE MAN, and his efforts in the face of these years of assault and misery have been Herculean!! 
So it's not a "distraction" for those orgs (like the ACLU) as they are usually targeting the whole thing in a suit.
I saw this morning that a court threw out a portion of a TX law around the same time as this GA suit, that required voters to include the original "Voter Registration number" that they were assigned when they first registered to vote, on their mail ballot. That was deemed completely irrelevant as a need to actually vote, but sadly, thousands of voters had their mail ballots invalidated in the last election because they couldn't remember what their Voter registration number might have been from decades ago and/or it didn't "match" to a driver's license number or last 4 digits of a SS# in the records. 
(ACLU's summary of it and all the litigants)
Civil Rights Groups Sue Georgia Over New Sweeping Voter Suppression Law
Case: Sixth District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church v. Kemp
March 30, 2021 8:00 am
Media Contact
media@aclu.org
(212) 549-2666
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York, NY 10004
United States
ATLANTA — Civil rights groups have filed a new federal lawsuit against Georgia’s sweeping law that makes it much harder for all Georgians to vote, particularly voters of color, new citizens, and religious communities.
The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Georgia, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and law firms WilmerHale and Davis Wright Tremaine brought the case on behalf of the Sixth District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Georgia Muslim Voter Project, Women Watch Afrika, Latino Community Fund Georgia, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
The law being challenged is S.B. 202, which was passed by the Georgia House of Representatives and Senate and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp in under seven hours last Thursday. These elected officials’ actions follow the 2020 presidential election and the 2021 runoff elections for two seats to the U.S. Senate that saw record turnout of voters, particularly Black voters, in Georgia.
The elections were celebrated not just for their turnout, but also for their integrity, with Georgia officials praising them as safe and secure. But rather than act to expand participation in the political process, Georgia leaders responded by doing what they have done many times in the state’s history: they placed burdensome, unjustified, and unnecessary restrictions on voters, particularly voters of color and other historically disenfranchised communities.
The lawsuit challenges multiple provisions in S.B. 202, including the:
ban on mobile voting new narrow identification requirements for requesting and casting an absentee ballot delayed and compressed time period for requesting absentee ballots restrictions on secure drop boxes out-of-precinct provisional ballot disqualification drastic reduction in early voting in runoff elections perhaps most cruelly, ban on “line warming,” where volunteers provide water and snacks to Georgians, disproportionately those of color, who wait in needlessly long lines to cast their vote
These provisions, the lawsuit charges, violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and infringe on Georgians’ rights under the First, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
(snip)
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/civil-rights-groups-sue-georgia-over-new-sweeping-voter-suppression-law
allowing me to vent. Lol.
I reacted to the headline, but the story that lies beneath is more interesting. I had the same knee-jerk reaction and I get it when people talk about voter ID laws, too.
The voter Id proponents make it sound like the law just is about producing an ID at the polling place. People do indeed have challenges with IDs, and that part of the law should be challenged. But what happens is the general public ignores the rest of the voter suppression parts of the law.
Thanks for a good discussion!
because I vent too and it can be like this at home -
I know here in PA, the loons in the legislature like to do copycat stuff and they had even started at it again by taking hostage of the state budget, although some realized that Democrats now controlled the state House as well as the governor's mansion and the state Supreme Court, so they finally yielded.
They have been trying to put in the draconian voter suppression provisions and repeal the very mail voting that they almost unanimously passed back in 2019 (except for 1 (R) who voted no), and only because PA flipped back to blue in 2020 thanks to those ballots (that's all I use now). 
because the way it was written, that zone actually had no boundaries and was like an empty subset zone within the "150ft" restriction. And the "150ft" part was bogus too because not only was anything handed out there banned, but apparently anything beyond the 150ft was as well, and that's when the "First Amendment" hammer came down.
So it sounds like a 150ft-from-the-entrance "zone" has been established and no one can come in that area except the voters.
It seems the insidious idea was to remove the possibility of "electioneering" at the polls and they wanted to give the false impression that providing food and water to people in line was "electioneering".
to figure out what was going on. I have a feeling that the "25ft" zone was probably a legacy thing to bar electioneering within that area from the poll entrance.
But then when they saw how the turnout had gone nuts during the 2020 Presidential and Senate special elections, where voting rights activists were helping to keep people motivated and hydrated, the spite legislation to scuttle that in the future came into play (including finding a way to bar people from making sure there were no medical emergencies happening among people standing in long lines), all so they could "get rid of a 'Democrat Party' (sic) vote" ).
One of my cousins lives down there and was one of the poll workers in DeKalb County just outside of Atlanta.
The original suit was filed in March 2021 so you can put 2 + 2 together for how fast the GA state legislature had put the law into effect (and this lawsuit was filed not long after). The run-off election for Raphael Warnock was Jan. 5, 2021, a couple days after the 117th Congress gavelled in for a new session, and his success brought the tally to a tie, where VP Harris would be counted as "#51", throwing the Senate control to Democrats (which itself took almost a month to resolve because Turtle was going to use every means necessary to thwart giving up his power ).
I had found a summary about the original suit at ACLU's page and posted about it upthread - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=3117410
