There’s big news on the ALEC front today: both retail giant Wal-Mart and Medtronic, a medical device company, have decided to dump the secretive right-wing group. It appears that ALEC’s campaign to promote controversial voter suppression and so-called Stand Your Ground laws played a role in Wal-Mart’s decision to part ways with the group:

“Previously, we expressed our concerns about ALEC’s decision to weigh in on issues that stray from its core mission ‘to advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets,’” Maggie Sans, Wal-Mart vice president of public affairs and government relations, said in a May 30 letter addressed to ALEC’s national chairman and executive director.

“We feel that the divide between these activities and our purpose as a business has become too wide. To that end, we are suspending our membership in ALEC.”