Aug. 6 marked the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights legislation that made voting possible for millions of Americans.
Why did we need a Voting Rights Act in 1965? Because the country had not been upholding the 15th and 19th amendments – the rights of all U.S. citizens over the age of 21 to vote – primarily due to anti-Black racism. States, counties and cities had created a set of convoluted rules and laws that denied Black men and women their right to vote.
Just five months after the American television-viewing public witnessed brutal police attacks on a nonviolent voting rights march in Selma, Alabama in March of 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in order to make those rules and laws illegal. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the VRA into law on Aug. 6, 1965, saying, “Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.” Amendment 203 was added to the Voting Rights Act in 1975 to also make illegal voter discrimination based on language, meaning citizens who had limited English could still exercise their right to vote.
The bill and its amendment had overwhelming support in both the Senate and the House. However, since its passage, there have been both small and large attempts to undermine the rights the VRA guarantees; these attempts have been thwarted by bipartisan lawmakers and courts, until 2013. Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted the VRA, at least 29 states have passed 94 laws that make it harder to vote, with the burden falling hardest on Black voters and other voters of color.
This court decision removed the requirement that states with a history of race-based discrimination get permission from the Justice Department before making any changes to voting practices, arguing that the South had changed and that this protection was “racial entitlement.” Within hours, states began making changes to their voting laws and practices that instantly disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent stated, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice notes that since the Shelby County v. Holder decision, “the white-Black voter turnout gap grew between 9 and 21 percentage points across five of the six states originally covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”
The 2013 Supreme Court ruling has not been the only successful significant undermining of the Voting Rights Act in the last 12 years. Numerous other court cases have allowed states to limit the use of early voting, absentee ballots and ballot collection boxes, to limit where citizens can vote, how they can prove their identity and eligibility to vote, how and when they can register to vote, what voters are purged from the rolls, and who can defend their voting rights in court. All of these moves toward voter suppression affect Black, Latinx, and other minority citizens disproportionately.
The League of Women Voters of the La Crosse Area urges the United States Congress and the Supreme Court to make every effort to uphold the voting rights as addressed in the Amendments to the Constitution and confirmed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and 1975. These laws align with the vision of the national League of Women Voters: “a democracy where every person has the desire, the right, the knowledge and the confidence to participate.”