Defying Republicans, big companies keep the focus on voting rights

As corporate America continues to push back against a wave of restrictive voting laws under discussion across the United States, Big Law is joining the fight.

A coalition of 60 major law firms has come together “to challenge voter suppression legislation and to support national legislation to protect voting rights and increase voter participation,” said Brad Karp, chairman of the law firm Paul Weiss and organizer of the group, which has not been formally announced.

Karp said the coalition would “emphatically denounce legislative efforts to make voting harder, not easier, for all eligible voters, by imposing unnecessary obstacles and barriers on the right to vote.”

Many of Wall Street’s most powerful firms are also part of the effort, including Simpson Thacher; Skadden Arps; Akin Gump; Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Ropes & Gray Sullivan & Cromwell; Weil, Gotshal & Manges; and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

“We plan to challenge any election law that would impose unnecessary barriers on the right to vote and the would disenfranchise underrepresented groups in our country,” Karp said.

The firms will work with the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit organization, to identify laws that it might challenge in court. Karp said that could include challenging the voting law that Republicans passed in Georgia last month and which set off a national debate over voting rights.

“It puts legislators on notice that if there are laws that are unconstitutional or illegal, they will face pushback from the legal community,” said Brennan Center President Michael Waldman. “This is beyond the pale. You’re hearing that from the business community and you’re hearing it from the legal community.”

On Saturday afternoon, more than 100 corporate leaders attended a Zoom meeting to discuss what they should do, if anything, to shape the debate around voting rights.

On the call, organized by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale professor who regularly gathers executives to discuss politics, several senior business leaders spoke forcefully about the need for companies to use their clout to oppose new state legislation that would make it harder to vote.

The call began with former American Express CEO Ken Chenault and Merck CEO Ken Frazier urging the executives to publicly state their support for broader ballot access, according to several people who attended the meeting. Last month, the two gathered 70 fellow Black leaders to sign a letter calling on companies to fight bills that restrict voting rights, such as the one that recently passed in Georgia.

Chenault and Frazier have prepared a new statement that broadly supports voting rights, and they are asking big companies to sign it this week.

Later on the call, several other CEOs shared their views on the wave of restrictive new voting laws being advanced by Republicans, according to the people who attended the meeting.

Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh called the movement a threat to democracy, while Mia Mends, a Black executive at Sodexo who is based in Houston, spoke about restrictive voting legislation that was making its way through the Texas Legislature.

Toward the end of the meeting, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman discussed the importance of having corporate leaders affirm that the last election was secure, and former 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch talked about the importance of a healthy democracy. Karp also attended the meeting.

The voting-rights debate is fraught for companies, putting them at the center of an increasingly heated partisan battle.

“CEOs are grappling right now with what to do and how to respond,” said Leadership Now CEO Daniella Ballou-Aares, who helped organize the call. “There is a lot of confusion.”

But beyond making statements, business leaders are at a loss over what they can do to influence the policy decisions made by Republican lawmakers who have embraced overhauling voting rights as a priority.

Companies such as Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola lobbied behind the scenes before the Georgia law was passed last month, and the companies say their efforts had a hand in removing some of the most restrictive provisions, such as eliminating Sunday voting.

But after Delta and Coca-Cola came out in opposition to the final law and other corporations began sounding the alarm about the voting legislation being advanced in nearly every state, Republican leaders lashed out.

“My warning, if you will, to corporate America is to stay out of politics,” US Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said last week. “It’s not what you’re designed for. And don’t be intimidated by the left into taking up causes that put you right in the middle of America’s greatest political debates.”

Yet the business community appears to be emboldened, with more companies and business groups preparing to get involved.

“All these CEOs came together days after McConnell admonished corporations to stay out of politics,” said CNBC founder Tom Rogers, who attended the meeting. “In convening, they were saying as a group that they were not going to be intimidated into not voicing their views on their issues.”

So far, however, there is little indication that the growing outcry from big business is changing Republicans’ priorities, with legislation in Texas and other states still moving ahead.

“Texas is the next one up,” said a CEO who attended the meeting but asked to remain anonymous. “Whether the business commitments will have a meaningful impact there, we’ll see.”