Houston, TX — A group of Harris County voters who are blind and who have print disabilities, together with the National Federation of the Blind of Texas, filed a proposed class-action lawsuit today against Harris County and County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth challenging the county’s failure to provide remote accessible vote-by-mail (RAVBM) ballots for blind and other voters who cannot read or complete paper ballots.

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, alleges violations of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. 

The individual plaintiffs include Cedric Bryant, Ted Galanos, Louis Maher, and Michael McCulloch, all registered Harris County voters who are blind and/or have other disabilities that prevent them from independently holding, reading, marking, or handling paper ballots.

They are joined by the National Federation of the Blind of Texas (NFB-TX ), the transformative civil rights organization of blind Texans, which is an affiliate of the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind. The plaintiffs filed this complaint not just on their own behalf, but on behalf of all registered Harris County voters with print disabilities and will seek class certification to represent that entire group in this lawsuit. 

"Voting is a fundamental right essential to full and equal participation in American society, and that right necessarily includes the ability to cast a ballot privately and independently, without fear of disclosing our vote to others or having our ballot tampered with," said Norma Crosby, president of the National Federation of the Blind of Texas.

"Harris County already provides electronic ballots to military and overseas voters and even to astronauts in outer space. There is no lawful or practical reason to deny the same access to blind and print-disabled voters here at home. We are merely demanding the secret ballot that other voters already have and is guaranteed by law. "

"The National Federation of the Blind has fought for, and won, the equal right to a secret and secure ballot elsewhere in Texas and beyond,” said Mark Riccobono, President of the National Federation of the Blind.

"We will continue to aggressively defend the right of every blind American to cast their ballot with complete privacy and independence and to break down the barriers that needlessly prevent blind people from participating in our democracy."

Under Harris County’s current system, vote-by-mail ballots are provided only in paper form. As a result, voters who are blind or have print disabilities must rely on sighted assistants to read and mark their ballots, sacrificing privacy and independence and violating Texas law, which guarantees a secret ballot. 

Blind and print-disabled voters regularly use access technologies—such as text-to-speech screen readers, Braille displays, mouth-stick styluses, and adaptive switches—to independently access digital devices and electronic documents. If Harris County provided ballots that could be marked and returned electronically with these technologies, these voters could complete them without assistance.

The lawsuit also points out that Harris County previously offered a Remote Accessible Vote-by-Mail (RAVBM) system for military and overseas voters and has successfully transmitted electronic ballots to astronauts on space missions, including Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams, who were stranded for several months aboard the International Space Station. In addition, Bexar County, Texas was ordered by a federal court in 2023 to provide accessible electronic ballots to blind voters as a result of a similar lawsuit.

Despite repeated requests from Disability Rights Texas and advocates for blind voters, Harris County has refused to extend its electronic ballot system to voters with print disabilities. In October 2024, after individual plaintiff Michael McCulloch requested an accessible ballot as an accommodation, the County Clerk’s Office denied the request, asserting that no such ballot existed and that Texas law prohibited electronic ballots for disabled voters.

"That assertion is simply wrong," said Eve Hill, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs. “Federal disability rights laws require public entities to provide auxiliary aids and services, including accessible electronic documents, when necessary to ensure equal access. Accessible electronic ballots are readily available and already in use in Texas and many other jurisdictions."

The plaintiffs are asking the federal court to order Harris County to implement an accessible electronic vote-by-mail system, declare the current paper-only system unlawful, and award attorneys’ fees and costs.

The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys from Disability Rights Texas and the Baltimore firm Brown Goldstein & Levy LLP.