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Perkins Coie's Marc Elias Became Every Democrat's Favorite Lawyer.
Link to tweet
Elias is the lawyer many Democrats, especially those on Twitter, thank for their ability to sleep at night in the days and weeks following the election. He and his team at Perkins Coie ran up a 62-1 court record against Republicans in post-election litigation, and his propensity to live-tweet the legal dunk contest brought the public along for the ride. But he wasn’t feeling quite so confident in September.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had just died, and Elias shared a concern common among Democrats that the electoral system would disintegrate in the post-election period. Federal judges appointed by President Donald Trump would reverse years of jurisprudence, he feared, and the Republican-led Senate was gearing up to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
“Many, many people, very smart people, people whose opinions I respect and people who are on the left, were saying that everything that I had worked for in the past two years around expanding voting rights and equal dignity for all voters was going to be unwound in a matter of days or weeks,” Elias says. “And that post-election was likely going to be an avalanche of federal court losses. That was very difficult, because it was on the heels of losing a real hero, and icon for voting: Justice Ginsburg.”
Fortunately for Elias and the 81 million Americans who voted for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ worst-case scenario didn’t pan out. He’ll tell you—whether through his website, Democracy Docket, which he launched in March to educate the public on voting rights and redistricting litigation, or on his Twitter feed, which was liberal catnip in the post-election—that the litigation never had any merit, that it was always just a lever to undermine our confidence in the electoral process.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had just died, and Elias shared a concern common among Democrats that the electoral system would disintegrate in the post-election period. Federal judges appointed by President Donald Trump would reverse years of jurisprudence, he feared, and the Republican-led Senate was gearing up to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
“Many, many people, very smart people, people whose opinions I respect and people who are on the left, were saying that everything that I had worked for in the past two years around expanding voting rights and equal dignity for all voters was going to be unwound in a matter of days or weeks,” Elias says. “And that post-election was likely going to be an avalanche of federal court losses. That was very difficult, because it was on the heels of losing a real hero, and icon for voting: Justice Ginsburg.”
Fortunately for Elias and the 81 million Americans who voted for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ worst-case scenario didn’t pan out. He’ll tell you—whether through his website, Democracy Docket, which he launched in March to educate the public on voting rights and redistricting litigation, or on his Twitter feed, which was liberal catnip in the post-election—that the litigation never had any merit, that it was always just a lever to undermine our confidence in the electoral process.
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