OCA-Greater Houston v. Texas

Any challenge to a state CAP on voter assistance runs into this case. South Carolina's rules, including a CAP of five voters per helper, survived on 30 September 2026 when Judge Mary Geiger Lewis found the challengers lacked standing and dismissed without prejudice. That outcome left the merits untouched, which is the ground where OCA's reading of Section 208 would apply.

The Fifth Circuit decided the case at 867 F.3d 604, with Judge Patrick Higginbotham writing for a panel with Judges Graves and Higginson. In October 2014 Mallika Das, a citizen with limited English, tried to vote in Williamson County, Texas. An election officer refused to let her son interpret because Texas Election Code section 61.033 required interpreters to be registered voters of the same county. Das died while the suit was pending, and OCA-Greater Houston, the local branch of the Organization of Chinese Americans, carried it on as an organisation.

the Court held that section 61.033 'impermissibly narrows the right guaranteed by Section 208' of the Voting Rights Act, under which a voter needing assistance picks the helper. It vacated the district court's injunction as too broad and remanded. The case also stands as an example of an organisation keeping a voting suit alive after the individual voter could not.