The Enduring Work of Protecting Voting Rights: 59 Years and Counting

The Justice Department once described the Voting Rights Act (VRA) as the most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever enacted. President Lyndon B. Johnson, when he signed the bill on Aug. 6, 1965, called it “one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom.”

The act has opened the door for more Americans to have voice in our democratic process. Sadly, though, opponents continue to undermine and obstruct access to the ballot. The Voting Rights Act is, as yet, a promise unfulfilled.

Just last week, for example, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals contradicted its own precedent that has stood for 35 years when it overturned a lower court’s ruling that a redistricting plan in Galveston County, Texas, violated Section 2 of the Act. The Court overruled its previous standard allowing politically cohesive Black and Latino voters to join together in claiming that an election system or districting plan denied them an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.

When signed into law, the VRA was the first legislation to forbid outright rules that denied voting rights on account of race or color. It also outlawed literacy tests, and it required jurisdictions to provide bilingual ballots if enough of their voters had limited English proficiency.

Importantly, in Section 4(b), the act identified localities whose history of discrimination was egregious enough to warrant special oversight. Section 5 contained the consequential idea of preclearance: those identified localities would now have to submit potential voting rule changes for federal approval. They could no longer suppress votes at whim.

For almost half a century, this vital piece of legislation empowered the Justice Department to stop localities from obstructing voters of color from participating fully in the electoral process. Section 5 thwarted such barriers nearly 1,200 times.

But in 2013 the Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, found Section 4(b) of the VRA unconstitutional. Without it, Section 5’s protective shield vanished. Shelby flung wide the floodgates to voter suppression, and opponents of representative democracy wasted no time in barreling through them.

States introduced restrictive voting measures the day of and in the days after Shelby, and they have continued to erode voting rights. Last year, the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy institute, declared that since 2013, nearly a hundred new laws have restricted voting rights, many in states previously identified by Section 4(b)’s formula.

As a small sample, according to the Brennan Center, in 2021, at least 19 states passed 34 laws meant to abridge voting rights. In 2022, eight states passed 11 such laws and in 2023 at least 14 states passed 17.

In 2024, the barriers continue to mount.

Some courts, seemingly unconstrained by either precedent or the language of the statute, have spurred on this destructive process with decisions that further curtail the protection of voting rights, fueling a surge of litigation assaults by state governments and others that even attack the constitutionality of Section 2, despite the Supreme Court decision upholding it in 2023.

These threats are grave, but the Justice Department’s response is unstinting. As the actions below reveal, we vigorously confront voting discrimination.

• We challenged restrictive voting laws enacted by states and counties nationwide, such as by convincing a federal court to strike down Arizona laws requiring people registering to vote to list their birthplace and provide proof of citizenship.
• In a different case, we challenged Texas’ restrictions on voter assistance at the polls, including laws that prohibit assistance for voters with disabilities or those who cannot read or write. We also challenged statewide redistricting plans in Texas.
• We challenged several restrictive state voting practices in Georgia, including rules that banned government entities from distributing unsolicited absentee ballot applications, moved up the deadline to request an absentee ballot, and prohibited giving food or water to people waiting in line to vote.
• We also sued local jurisdictions. For example, we sued Galveston County, Texas, to challenge its redistricting plan, the case the Fifth Circuit overturned last week. And in Oneida County, New York, we ensured that the county would process voter registrations submitted before the deadline for federal elections and promptly include qualified voters on the rolls for federal elections.
• In Georgia, we worked to protect voters from intimidation, threats, and coercion in Fair Fight v. True the Vote.
• We defended the VRA’s ban on racial discrimination, such as via redistricting plans that dilute the strength of minority voters, in Alpha Phi Alpha v. Raffensperger and Nairne v. Ardoin. We helped defend absentee voting rights protections in presidential elections in IATSE v. Mashburn.
• We supported private citizens’ rights to challenge unfair voting practices by filing briefs in federal trial courts in Alabama (2), Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia (2), Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Pennsylvania (2) and Texas.
• During the Nov. 8, 2022, general election, we monitored polls in more than 50 jurisdictions in more than 20 states and operated a call center to receive election complaints. Since January 2021, we have monitored elections in 76 jurisdictions in 24 states.
• We protected the voting rights of people who speak primarily a language other than English in Union County, New Jersey, and Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
• In New Jersey, we safeguarded the rights of voters with disabilities to broadly access voter registration opportunities through paratransit and other state-funded disability transportation services.

The great heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, both leaders and foot soldiers, fought, bled and died to secure the precious right to vote. Now, in the courts, in the legislatures, and on the ground, we face deterioration of the voting rights that our forbearers sacrificed so much to win.   

We call on you to become civil rights heroes. Report voting rights violations. Report threats against election workers.  Speak out against efforts to restrict access to the polls. 

Know that we will be there beside you. We will not shrink from the challenge. We will continue the struggle of those who came before us. We will honor their sacrifice. The stakes are too high; our freedom is too precious for anything less.