Sean Young, legal director, ACLU of Georgia. (Photo: John Disney/ALM)

Civil rights lawyers are challenging a purge of voter rolls for people who gave one particular address in Decatur.

“The ACLU of Georgia and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law write on behalf of the New Georgia Project and the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda in response to a voter purge of Decatur residents approved during your August 1, 2019 meeting,” ACLU of Georgia Legal Director Sean J. Young of Atlanta and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Counsel John Powers of Washington, D.C., said in a letter to the DeKalb Board of Registration and Elections Tuesday.

As Exhibit A, the letter included minutes showing the board “categorically purged several voters, including all of those who listed as their residence 444 Sycamore Drive, Decatur, GA 30030.”

“Your stated reason for the purge was that this address ‘is a business where clients can only stay for three days, and citizens cannot register at a business,’ and that based on your ‘understanding,’ ‘at one point, it was a residence.’ The minutes, however, do not cite to any evidence in support of these assertions,” Young and Powers said.

“The registered voters at 444 Sycamore Drive appear to be among the most vulnerable among us and hardest hit by life’s struggles,” Young and Powers continued.

The letter included as Exhibit B information on the Peer Support, Wellness, and Respite Center, located at that address. The exhibit said the center is “freely available for people with mental disabilities who need housing to avoid psychiatric hospitalization, and where residents may stay up to seven nights (not three nights), in 30-day intervals presumably indefinitely.”

Young and Powers asserted that the building can serve as a residence for people struggling to find permanent housing. “Indeed, it may be the only home for people who are otherwise homeless, have challenging mental disabilities, and have nowhere else to turn,” they said.

The lawyers made an open records request for information pertaining to the purge and said it may have violated Georgia law.

“The board needs to explain its actions,” Young said in a news release Tuesday. “It is morally wrong for government officials to judge where someone calls home.”

In response to a request for comment from the Daily Report Tuesday, board Director Erica Hamilton defended the purge.

“The Decatur Peer Support and Wellness Center is not a place of residence,” Hamilton said in an email. “As always, anyone who would like to become a registered voter in DeKalb County, including the affected individuals, can register to vote using their address of residence in DeKalb County.”