Advocacy group for the disabled headed to court over voting rights

On Thursday, a Voting Rights Act complaint will be filed by the Disability and Abuse Project, seeking a review of voting eligibility in Los Angeles County for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

As The Associated Press reports in an exclusive, the group specifically studied adults who are under limited conservatorships, which are legal arrangements that allow a parent or guardian to make decisions for people who cannot take care of their own financial and medical matters. The Disability and Abuse Project looked at a sample of 61 cases in L.A. County, and discovered that 90 percent of those who had limited conservatorships had been denied the right to vote.

According to the complaint, The Associated Press says, judges in Los Angeles Superior Court violated the federal Voting Rights Act by having those adults under limited conservatorships take literacy tests. "We want those past injustices to be corrected, and we want the judges and court-appointed attorneys to protect, not violate, the rights of people with developmental disabilities," Thomas F. Coleman, the legal advisor of the Disability and Abuse Project, said in a statement.

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The complaint also asks the court to repeal voter-disqualification notes that were sent to thousands of people over the past 10 years.