Laura W. Brill

After the November 2020 general election, Brill realized that roughly 23,000 teenagers in Georgia who had been too young to vote then would become old enough in time for the January special election to fill Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats.

Since she already headed an organization called The Civics Center dedicated to encouraging young people to register and vote, she wrote a blog post about the potential Georgia voters for the nonprofit’s website.

“That number galvanized resources from all over the country,” Brill said. Her post prompted articles in USA Today, Newsweek and even the MIT Technology Review. And it fired up young people in the state to organize and register new voters.

“There was a very dramatic boost [of new young voters] that you would not typically see before a runoff election,” she said. “It was just asking the right question at the right time.”

An appellate specialist, Brill launched The Civics Center after she discovered how few 16- and 17-year-olds in the county were pre-registered to vote.

Since then, the center has provided trainings, registration kits, advocacy and other resources about registration and pre-registration laws and by sponsoring annual High School Voter Registration Weeks in 36 states so far.

Her work for voters goes further. She filed an amicus brief at the U.S. Supreme Court in January on behalf of former congressional staffers arguing that new Arizona laws violate the Voting Rights Act. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 19-1257 (U.S. S.Ct., filed April 27, 2020).

Her most recent major victory involving voting came in August. In just over three weeks, she defeated an attempt to remove a county measure from the ballot that would shift some unrestricted funds to housing, mental health, jail diversion, employment and other social services programs. Measure J passed with 57% of the vote. Coalition of County Unions v. Logan, 20STCP02478, (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Aug. 5, 2020).

Now Brill is defending the measure in a second lawsuit from the same group of county employee unions, who this time are seeking to enjoin its operation. Coalition of County Unions v. Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, 20STCP04019, (L.A. Super.Ct., filed Dec. 8, 2020).

— Don DeBenedictis