Panelists
for the National Commission on the Voting Rights Act Hearing
in Orlando on August 4, 2005
Debo Adegbile
Debo P. Adegbile is the Associate Director of Litigation
at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc.,
where he works with the Director of Litigation to oversee
the organization’s legal program while remaining
actively engaged in voting rights litigation and advocacy.
Mr. Adegbile’s voting rights experience with LDF
encompasses constitutional cases and actions arising under
the Voting Rights Act and other federal or state statutes.
Recently, he served as lead counsel for African-American
intervenors in Louisiana House of Representatives v. Ashcroft,
et al. The litigation resulted in a settlement through
which Louisiana withdrew a redistricting plan that would
have diminished the voting strength of its African-American
citizens and adopted a plan that preserved their voting
strength.
Meredith Bell-Platts Click
here to view testimony
Meredith Bell-Platts has been with the Voting Rights Project
of the American Civil Liberties Union since 2001. As staff
counsel, she litigates cases surrounding the redistricting
of congressional, state legislative, county and city councils,
and school boards. One of her current projects concerns
monitoring partisan redistricting which remains a threat
to the maintenance of gains achieved in minority representation
– a project that has led her to pen a law review
article “Extreme Makeover: Racial Consideration and
the Voting Rights Act in the Politics of Redistricting,”
to be published this fall in the Stanford Journal of Civil
Rights and Civil Liberties.
Bradford E. Brown, Ph.D. Click
here to view testimony
Dr. Bradford E. Brown has been a civil rights activist
for over 40 years in Alabama, Oklahoma, Massachusetts
and Florida. He is currently the Political Action Chair
of the Miami-Dade Branch of the NAACP and the immediate
past president. Throughout his career as a civil rights
activist, Mr. Brown has served on the Oklahoma, Massachusetts
and Florida Advisory Committees to the U.S. Rights Commission
and remains on the Florida Committee. He also currently
serves on the Board of Directors of HOPE INC--a South
Florida Fair Housing organization.
Hon. G.K. Butterfield
Congressman G. K. Butterfield represents the First District
of North Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives.
He currently serves as a member of the House Committee
on Agriculture and the House Armed Services Committee.
In addition, Butterfield also serves on the prestigious
Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. Prior to running
for Congress, Butterfield served as a Resident Superior
Court judge for 12 years before being appointed to the
Supreme Court of North Carolina by then-Gov. Michael Easley.
Butterfield is a past president of the North Carolina
Association of Black Lawyers and has filed several successful
voting rights lawsuits that resulted in the election of
black elected officials in eastern North Carolina.
Monica Dula
Monica Dula is a staff attorney with Criminal Defense
Division of the Legal Aid Society. Before joining the
Legal Aid Society, Ms. Dula worked for the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency.
Ms. Dula is currently the Vice President for Membership
of the Metropolitan Black Bar Association of New York
and recently served as the Chair of the Election 2004
Task Force of the National Bar Association.
Iris Green
Iris Green is a member of the National Bar Association.
Reginald J. Mitchell
Reginald J. Mitchell, Esq. is the Florida Legal Counsel
& Tallahassee Office Director of People for the American
Way and People for the American Way Foundation. He is
a registered lobbyist with the Florida Legislature and
a licensed Florida Attorney. He was formerly the Florida
Election Protection Director of People for the American
Way Foundation and previously served as an associate at
Parks & Crump, LLC.
Regine Monestime
Currently, Ms. Monestime heads up her own law firm focusing
on appellate and real estate law. Prior to this, she served
as an Assistant Attorney General in the criminal appeals
division before the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, the Third
District Court of Appeal, the Florida Supreme Court and
the United States District Court for over two years.
Ms. Monestime then joined the City of Miami Attorney’s
Office where she was chief appellate counsel in the litigation
division. For the past five years, Ms. Monestime has been
a core member of the Haitian Lawyers Association, serving
in numerous capacities and is currently the Immediate
Past President of the association. Ms. Monestime has volunteers
in local, state and national elections to ensure that
voter rights, particularly those of the Haitian-American
community in South Florida, are preserved.
Marlon Primes Click
here to view testimony
Marlon Primes has served as an assistant U.S. attorney
in Cleveland for the past thirteen years and as an adjunct
professor at the University of Akron for the past five
years. He is the national vice president of the National
Bar Association, a Master Bencher in the William K. Thomas
Chapter of the American Inns of Court, a former Chairman
of the Cleveland Bar Association’s (“CBA”)
Justice for All Committee, a former member of the CBA
Board of Trustees, and a member of the CBA Foundation.
Marytza Sanz
Marytza Sanz is the President and CEO of Latino Leadership
located in Orlando, Florida. Latino Leadership as a non-profit,
non-partisan, community-based organization working to
guarantee the welfare of children by pursuing the development
of a strong and vibrant Hispanic community for Central
Florida through leadership development and empowerment,
education advancement, and economic community development.
Constance Iona Slaughter-Harvey
Constance Slaughter-Harvey is an adjunct professor at
Tougaloo College and currently serves as the president
of Elections, Inc. She was the first African American
woman to receive a law degree from the University of Mississippi
on January 27, 1970. Upon graduation, Attorney Slaughter-Harvey
joined the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under
Law as a staff attorney and worked there until 1972 when
she returned to Forest and established her private law
practice. She was executive director of Southern Legal
Rights and later became director of East Mississippi Legal
Services in 1979.
Among her many accomplishments, Constance Slaughter-Harvey
is a past President of the Magnolia Bar Association, a
current President of Scott County Bar Association, a 1999
Mississippi Bar Foundation Fellow and Vice Chair of the
Mississippi Supreme Court Gender Task Force. She is also
a member of the 8th Judicial Circuit District Drug Court
Team.
Courtenay
Strickland
Courtenay Strickland is the Director of the Voting Rights
Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
of Florida. She is responsible for coordinating the
Florida ACLU’s legal, legislative, and grassroots
efforts on a number of election reform issues.
In 2001 Ms. Strickland co-founded the Miami-Dade Election
Reform Coalition, a leading advocate of progressive
voting practices particularly with regard to voting
machine technology. In addition, Ms. Strickland is the
primary organizer of the ACLU’s campaign to restore
the voting and civil rights of the 600,000+ citizens
of Florida who have lost those rights due to a past
felony conviction. In that capacity, she founded the
Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, a statewide group
of nearly forty local, state, and national organizations
dedicated to bringing an end to Florida’s unjust
voting ban through a state constitutional amendment.
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