ACLU-SC sues for transparency in 2025 firing of state’s top election official

COLUMBIA – The American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina is suing to demand public transparency around the firing of State Election Commission Executive Director Howard Knapp on Sept. 17, 2025.

"Last year, the State Election Commission removed South Carolina's top election official after a secret trial, secret deliberations, and a secret vote. We're going to court because the Freedom of Information Act guarantees more transparency than that,” said Allen Chaney, Legal Director of the ACLU of South Carolina.

The lawsuit filed on Sept. 17, 2026, asks a Richland County Court judge to set a hearing within 10 days and declare that the State Election Commission (SEC) violated the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The lawsuit asks the court to order the SEC to disclose all documents, recordings, and other materials pertaining to an executive session where Knapp’s firing was being debated.

“The SEC went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the executive session was shielded from public scrutiny,” the legal complaint states. The ACLU of South Carolina is not representing Knapp, but is instead suing to demand that the state election agency comply with the state’s public-meeting and public-record law.

Knapp’s removal came during a conflict over sensitive personally identifying information about millions of South Carolina voters. In 2025, for the first time in history, the U.S. Department of Justice had demanded access to the state’s unredacted voter registration list. This demand was part of an unprecedented attempt by the federal government to create a database with personal information about every voter in the country.

As the Brennan Center for Justice warned at the time, such a database could be used to “target political opponents,” be invoked in an “attempt to force states to remove voters from the rolls based on incomplete information,” or “become a prime target for hackers.”

In his role as executive director of the SEC, Knapp resisted this unprecedented demand, setting off a conflict within the state election agency. This led to what The State newspaper described as a time of “chaos and uncertainty,” ending with Knapp’s removal in a 3-2 vote by the commission on Sept. 17, 2025. The ACLU of South Carolina’s lawsuit seeks to bring public clarity on the process that led to Knapp’s removal.

The lawsuit states that the State Election Commission “circumvented the spirit and requirements of FOIA by conducting official business outside of a public meeting.” Among other violations, the complaint states that then-SEC Chairman Dennis Shedd contacted commissioners one at a time to lobby for Knapp’s removal.

That was not the end of the FOIA violations. The ACLU of South Carolina has found that commissioners of the SEC failed to give proper notice before holding a closed-door executive session, conducted an adversary hearing regarding Knapp without permitting him to demand it be conducted publicly, and polled commission members in secret during the executive session.

South Carolina FOIA requires public access to the meetings and records of public bodies. When South Carolina lawmakers passed FOIA, they included a statement of purpose: “[I]t is vital in a democratic society that public business be performed in an open and public manner so that citizens shall be advised of the performance of public officials and of the decisions that are reached in public activity and in the formulation of public policy.”