ACS Program Guides
ACS creates a program guide focusing on a different key issue every year to assist chapter leaders in planning events in these areas.
The Roberts Court’s Demolition of Voting Rights
Ten years ago, ACS released a program guide entitled “Are All Voters Created Equal?.” As the nation prepares for the 2026 midterms, another critically important federal election cycle, it is worth a look back at this document to reflect on just how methodically the Roberts Court has taken apart federal voting rights protections since the cataclysmic Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013. After over a decade of this piece-by-piece evisceration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (“VRA”) and other key pieces of pro-democracy legislation, it is impossible to look at the damage wrought by the Court’s jurisprudence and answer the question posed by the 2016 guide with anything but a simple “no.” But real questions remain about how to move forward in this next phase in the fight for voting rights to secure access to the ballot box for all voters, regardless of race, gender, or zip code, and meaningful opportunities for representation at all levels of government and the right to have one’s voice heard.
Read MoreThe First Amendment in Flux
The 2025 ACS Program Guide offers an overview of some of the First Amendment issues implicated by recent doctrinal developments as well as executive and legislative actions at the federal and state level. The topics selected for this Program Guide are not exhaustive but are meant to provide a starting point for chapters as they consider upcoming programming on the First Amendment and related issues.
Read MoreSecuring Rights in Every Community
The United States is in the midst of a struggle between securing the promise of a multiracial democracy and succumbing to authoritarianism. It is a struggle between courts committed to the rule of law and courts committed to the conservative legal movement’s agenda, between policymakers seeking to securing freedoms and rights for all people and those seeking to secure more power for the powerful and privileged at the expense of historically marginalized, vulnerable communities.
Read MoreAuthoritarian Threats to Securing a Multiracial Democracy
American democracy is confronting a moment of truth, in which the danger of succumbing to autocracy must be met with efforts to forge a genuinely multiracial democracy. Over the past decade and a half, the U.S. has experienced a rise and mainstreaming of white nationalism. At the federal level, these forces have been folded into a broader effort to entrench counter-majoritarian rule by exploiting antidemocratic features within the design of the judiciary, the electoral college, the U.S. Senate, and decennial redistricting.
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