Anna Mackin

Anna Mackin is an experienced civil litigator who joined The Gober Group after over a decade in public service, where she served as a senior advisor to federal and state officials and successfully represented governmental parties in litigation of national significance. Anna’s practice focuses on constitutional and political law with an emphasis on the First Amendment, campaign finance, voting, elections, and redistricting. Anna counsels clients at all stages of political participation by advising on compliance, strategy, and risk-management, and by advocating for her clients before regulatory bodies and Texas and federal courts.

Anna most recently served as counsel to a Chairman and a Vice Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, which enables her to advise clients holistically on how to navigate the agency’s enforcement, advisory, and rulemaking processes. Anna also was the chief legal advisor to the Texas Senate during the 2021 legislative redistricting cycle, where she successfully managed risk to ensure compliance in all aspects of the Senate’s post-Census redistricting process.

Anna previously served as Assistant Attorney General and Special Litigation Counsel at the Texas Attorney General’s Office, where she represented the State of Texas, its officers, its agencies, and its laws in politically charged civil litigation. She handled cases involving ballot access, voter registration, election administration, the Voting Rights Act, the government response to COVID-19, employee speech, charitable bingo, and employment discrimination. In these cases, Anna took dozens of depositions, briefed and argued numerous dispositive motions, presented and cross-examined witnesses at trials and evidentiary hearings, and briefed and argued appeals to Texas appellate courts and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Anna also served as a liaison from the Attorney General’s Office to the Texas Legislature and successfully assisted elected lawmakers in crafting legislation to further legislative policy goals without creating unintended consequences for the agency’s hundreds of attorneys and staff.

Anna’s public-service experience also includes drafting appellate opinions at the Texas Court of Appeals for the Third Judicial District, serving as a law clerk to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, pursuing impact litigation at the Institute for Free Speech, and formulating policy at the Cato Institute.

Anna is fluent in Spanish and lives in Austin with her husband and their daughters.

Representative Litigation Matters:

• Lead district court counsel in successful defense of Texas’s signature verification requirement for mail-in ballots. Richardson v. Texas Sec’y of State, 978 F.3d 220, 224 (5th Cir. 2020).
• Counsel in multiple cases successfully defending Texas election laws in the context of COVID-19. Texas Democratic Party v. Abbott, 978 F.3d 168 (5th Cir. 2020) (district court counsel); Hughs v. Move Texas Action Fund, No. 03-20-00497-CV (Tex. App.—Austin Oct. 23, 2020) (lead district court and appellate counsel); State v. Texas Democratic Party, No. 14-20-00358-CV (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] July 16, 2020) (lead district court counsel).
• Successfully defended Texas ballot-access requirements against request for preliminary injunction. Miller v. Doe, 422 F. Supp. 3d 1176, 1179 (W.D. Tex. 2019).
• Trial counsel in challenge to 2013 Texas redistricting maps. Perez v. Abbott, 267 F. Supp. 3d 750 (W.D. Tex. 2017), aff’d in part, rev’d in part, Abbott v. Perez, 138 S. Ct. 2305 (2018).
• Successfully argued for denial of preliminary injunction and obtained dismissal of challenge to UT Austin’s campus-carry policy. Glass v. Paxton, No. 1:16-CV-845 (W.D. Tex. July 6, 2017), aff’d, 900 F.3d 233 (5th Cir. 2018) (lead district court counsel).
• Obtained multiple summary judgments dismissing discrimination claims against state defendants. Cooper v. Univ. of Texas Health Sci. Ctr. at Tyler, No. 6:16-CV-1270 (E.D. Tex. Mar. 1, 2018); for Juv. Mgmt., Inc. v. Williams, No. 5:15-CV-640-RP (W.D. Tex. Sept. 22, 2016).
• Drafted successful motion to certify questions regarding the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act to the en banc United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Holmes v. Federal Election Commission, 823 F.3d 69 (D.C. Cir. 2016).
• Successfully obtained permanent injunction against state law prohibiting electioneering on election day. Emineth v. Jaeger, 901 F. Supp. 2d 1138 (S.D.N.D. 2012).