Danielle Lang

In 2018, Danielle Lang sat at Dion Jackson's kitchen table while he held his baby and showed her the letter rejecting his absentee-ballot application. He had used the address on his identification, but officials had rejected it as invalid. Jackson had never voted before; a political event on the Spirit Lake Reservation had encouraged him to participate. He assumed the letter meant he could not vote. After discussing his options, he joined the lawsuit, and a court order allowed him and his fellow plaintiffs to cast ballots.

Lang and her colleagues spent the weeks around the election driving between North Dakota reservations. She found a street with different names on two online maps, her client's state-issued ID, the state's mapping system and a nearby sign. Many residents used post-office boxes because their homes lacked reliable street addresses. The residential-address requirement assumed a system of addresses that the government had not consistently supplied.

In Spirit Lake Tribe v. Jaeger, Lang helped lead the Campaign Legal Center team working with the Native American Rights Fund and other counsel for the Spirit Lake Nation, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and individual voters. The 2020 consent decree required acceptance of tribal identification and tribally designated addresses. A voter who lacked or did not know a residential address could mark a home on a map, at the polls or when applying for an absentee ballot, and receive the address documentation from county officials. Ballots cast through that process had to be counted.

The agreement also provided for free identification, public education, poll-worker training and compliance review. Those measures addressed obstacles beyond the application itself, including the distance to an office that issued identification. CLC estimated that more than 7,000 voting-age residents of the two nations would benefit.

From Employment Rights to Voting Rights

Lang graduated with honors from New York University in 2008 and from Yale Law School in 2012, then clerked for Judge Richard A. Paez of the Ninth Circuit. As a Skadden Fellow in the Employment Rights Project at Bet Tzedek Legal Services in Los Angeles, she represented low-wage immigrant workers in wage-and-hour, discrimination and human-trafficking matters. She joined the Campaign Legal Center in 2015 and became its vice president for voting rights and rule of law. She is admitted in the District of Columbia, New York and Pennsylvania, before the Supreme Court, the federal district court in Washington and seven federal courts of appeals.

Citizens Caught in Registration Lists

In Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice v. Allen, CLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Fair Elections Center challenged a program that flagged 3,251 registered voters for removal and criminal investigation before the 2024 election. Alabama relied on records showing that people had once been issued noncitizen identification numbers, even though many had since become citizens. Lang explained that outdated data had also swept up U.S.-born voters. The district court entered a preliminary injunction under the National Voter Registration Act's restrictions on systematic removals within ninety days of a federal election. It required the state to halt the program, reactivate affected registrations subject to specified exceptions, notify voters and send corrective guidance to the counties. By March 2025, the state had abandoned the program without restarting it, and the private plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their case.

Lang had helped lead a related challenge in Texas, where a stale driver-license list initially flagged about 95,000 registered voters for citizenship review. A federal judge halted the threatened purge. A binding settlement ended the program and restricted future use of driver-license information obtained before a person became a citizen, so naturalized voters would not again be singled out on that basis.

In Arizona, the problem involved two registration forms treated differently. The 2018 consent decree in LULAC v. Reagan required equal treatment of state- and federal-form applicants for federal elections. Officials also had to check citizenship information already in their records before limiting an applicant to a federal-only ballot.

Arizona returned to the Supreme Court in 2026 after H.B. 2492 again imposed documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements on voter registration. CLC and its partners challenged the law for voters and community organizations, and the Ninth Circuit in 2025 affirmed rulings against several provisions. The Supreme Court granted review on June 29, 2026. Lang is counsel of record for CLC-represented respondents in the consolidated disputes, which the Court set for argument on December 8, 2026.

The President and the Federal Forms

After the March 2025 executive order directing changes to election administration, Lang's CLC team and Democracy Defenders Fund sued for the League of United Latin American Citizens, Secure Families Initiative and Arizona Students' Association. They argued that the Constitution assigned the relevant election powers to Congress and the states, not the president.

On October 31, 2025, the district court granted partial summary judgment and permanently barred the Election Assistance Commission from implementing the order's documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement for the national mail voter-registration form. On January 30, 2026, it permanently enjoined the companion requirement for the federal form used by military and overseas voters. The rulings addressed presidential direction; they did not prevent agencies from acting independently under their lawful statutory powers. The government appealed, while other claims remained for further proceedings.

Mail Ballots and the Election Calendar

At a May 14, 2026 hearing on a further executive order, Lang urged the court to act before new mail-voting rules arrived in the middle of the election cycle. She warned that the proposed changes would produce the "maximum amount of chaos and confusion" for election officials, who would have little time to adapt after the rules became final.

The litigation accelerated after the Postal Service finalized its rule. In a September 1, 2026 amicus brief, Lang and her colleagues presented the assessment of election-administration expert Tammy Patrick. Election offices had already budgeted for the election and ordered ballot envelopes; a new federal portal would require technical systems, data-transfer procedures, staff training and authorization arrangements. On September 4, the Massachusetts court entered a new preliminary injunction blocking the rule, relying in part on the expert evidence. The government appealed, and CLC filed amicus briefs in the First Circuit and the Supreme Court. On September 14, the judge in CLC's own District of Columbia case entered a second preliminary injunction blocking the USPS rule. The challenges to the second executive order remain ongoing.

In the separate Watson v. Republican National Committee case, CLC and Protect Democracy filed an amicus brief defending Mississippi's practice of counting ballots postmarked by Election Day but received within five business days afterward. The Supreme Court's June 29, 2026 decision rejected the challenge, leaving the receipt deadlines of more than thirty states intact. "All voters, no matter how they cast their ballot, deserve the freedom to make their voices heard," Lang said. "This is a cornerstone of American democracy."

Restoring Votes and Training Lawyers

In 2018, Lang co-founded CLC's Restore Your Vote project with Blair Bowie. It helps people with past convictions navigate state restoration rules, including those who do not know that they are already entitled to vote. At Georgetown University Law Center, she co-teaches the Election Law Practicum as an adjunct professor. Students study constitutional and statutory protections, then prepare work tied to current election disputes: complaints, briefs, legislative proposals, administrative notices and materials explaining voters' rights.