Now in its third year, Fair Fight is continuing their efforts to support reform-minded district attorneys amid escalating right-wing efforts to remove them from office.
ATLANTA — Fair Fight today launched its 2023 District Attorney (DA) Program to support reform-minded district attorneys in their efforts to create equity and justice within Georgia’s criminal legal system. This is the third year of the District Attorney Program, which first launched in 2021 in response to the coordinated and ongoing national effort by far-right extremists to remove reform-minded district attorneys from office.
As right-wing attacks on district attorneys continue to take place in Georgia and across the country, Fair Fight’s District Attorney Program is designed to provide pro-criminal justice reform district attorneys with the tools, support, and resources to aid them in their efforts to create equity and justice in Georgia’s criminal legal system. In addition to supporting DA’s across the state of Georgia, Fair Fight also plans to expand the program later this year to support district attorneys in surrounding Southern states.
“In states across the country, anti-voter Republican politicians are using every tool in their arsenal to try to overturn elections,” said Fair Fight Political Director Nicole Robinson. “Their latest efforts to remove duly-elected progressive district attorneys is yet another tactic as part of their broader strategy to subvert the will of voters and silence their voices. Another piece of the puzzle in the trend of anti-voter politicians to undo the will of voters when the politicians do not like the results of elections.”
District attorneys have significant decision-making power in the criminal legal system, which disproportionately impacts Black and brown people—the same communities who are targeted by right-wing efforts to suppress votes and push access to the ballot out of reach. Anti-voter politicians are engaging in unprecedented executive and legislative actions aimed at impeachment, suspension, and removal from office of reform-minded prosecutors – especially those who represent communities of color and were elected primarily by voters of color.
- In Georgia, anti-voter lawmakers passed Senate Bill 92, legislation to set up a highly partisan committee with the power to strip away the autonomy of elected District Attorneys to make prosecutorial decisions on a case by case basis.
- In Florida, Governor Ron Desantis suspended Andrew Warren, the duly-elected district attorney in Tampa, after Warren spoke out against laws criminalizing women and doctors who seek abortion care.
- In Texas, anti-voter lawmakers filed multiple bills to remove elected district attorneys from office and subject them to civil penalties for their pledges to not prosecute certain marijuana or abortion related cases.
- In Mississippi, a supermajority of white state legislators passed and the Governor signed legislation to remove the ability for parts of the majority-Black city of Jackson to elect its own judges and prosecutors. Under this measure, these positions will be appointed by a group of all white officials.
“After the historic elections of reform-minded district attorneys in Georgia and across the country over the last few years, anti-voter politicians are doubling down on their efforts to undo the will of voters and to impose their own will on voters,” said Robinson. “Voters elected these district attorneys because they know that our criminal legal system is irrevocably broken and want to be represented by leaders who will work to create equity and justice within the system. Fair Fight’s District Attorney Program and the support it provides to pro-criminal justice reform district attorneys is pivotal to the ongoing fight to protect democracy and ensure that all eligible Americans can register to vote, cast their ballot, and have it counted.”
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