The national community organizing group ACORN today filed a federal lawsuit against the state attorney general and Allegheny County district attorney, claiming that a Pennsylvania statute that prohibits paying workers to collect a certain number of new voter registrations is unconstitutional.

Filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the lawsuit claims that the state statute has been used by District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. to charge five former employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Those people have been charged with filling out fraudulent voter registration applications and face a number of criminal counts, including forgery.

The statute being challenged by the lawsuit says that no person may make or accept payment if it is "based upon the number of registrations or applications obtained."

ACORN, which employed more than 300 registration canvassers in Allegheny County during 2008, collected more than 40,000 voter registration applications.

The canvassers were paid $8 per hour and worked, generally, in six-hour shifts.

Though ACORN says there were performance goals -- officials hoped that each worker would collect 20 applications per shift -- there was no extra pay or incentives based on those goals, they say.

"Having performance and production standards are essential to good management," said Witold Walczak, the legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania. "They've never used a per registration payment scheme."

The lawsuit claims that ACORN never terminated any employee simply for not meeting the performance goals on any particular shift.

However, the former workers who have been charged have said that there was a quota system in place at ACORN. One of those people, Mario Grisom of Wilkinsburg, said if the canvassers didn't reach their quota, they'd be fired.

"Contrary to claims made by ACORN's critics, the organization derives no benefit, financial or otherwise, from workers who engage in fraud or submit deficient voter registration applications," the lawsuit said. "ACORN's goal is not to register as many people as possible, but to increase the number of people who are legally registered to vote so that they can and hopefully will exercise their right to vote. Deficient or fraudulent applications do not increase the pool of registered voters or lead to more voters."

According to Mr. Walczak, this is the first lawsuit of its kind to be filed.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer.