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shelby county v. holder
Samuel Alito Gets the Facts Wrong... Again
In majority opinions gutting abortion rights and voting rights, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made crucial errors.
May 17, 2026
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the conservative majority’s opinions in two of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in recent years: 1) Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—overruling Roe v. Wade; and 2) Louisiana v. Callais—neutering the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In both cases, Alito recited and relied on asserted “facts” that did not exist.
Alito Rewrote History to Ban Abortion
Ohio State University Prof. Treva Lindsey observed, ”From the nation’s founding through the early 1800s, pre-quickening abortions—that is, abortions before a pregnant person feels fetal movement—were fairly common and even advertised.“
But Alito claimed incorrectly in Dobbs that “no common-law case or authority... remotely suggests a positive right to procure an abortion at any stage of pregnancy” and, in the United States specifically, “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.”
Writing for the three dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan called Alito “embarrassingly” wrong. There was no such “unbroken tradition,” and historical evidence undermined his claim. But the conservative majority got its desired outcome.
Roberts Began the Assault on the Voting Rights Act
In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority began undermining the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case. Prior to that decision, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination in voting had to obtain federal approval before making changes to election rules—a process known as preclearance. The state or locality had to prove that any changes would not disadvantage racial and ethnic minorities.
Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.
Roberts argued that the elections of 2008 and 2012—when there was no difference in voter participation rates between Black and white voters (i.e., no “turnout gap”)—meant that the Voting Rights Act had done its job and preclearance could be suspended.
Even at the time, Roberts’ reasoning was suspect. The elections of 2008 and 2012 were anomalies—not the end of the turnout gap—because Barack Obama’s candidacy had driven up Black turnout.
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted another flaw in Roberts’ logic: “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.”
Justice Ginsburg was correct, and now democracy is getting wet. A 2024 study concluded:
The formerly covered states [subject to preclearance] have large nonwhite populations and large turnout gaps, leading to some of the largest statewide turnout distortions in the nation. Put differently, a decade after Shelby County, the turnout gap continues to have a disproportionate impact in precisely the parts of the country that were once covered due to their histories of racially discriminatory voting practices.
Stated simply, “[S]ince 2013, the racial turnout gap around the nation has exploded.”
Alito Finished the Job
Justice Alito ignored the exploding turnout gap in striking the fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act on April 29, 2026. For decades previously, the court had ruled repeatedly that a state could not undermine minority voters’ power to choose their desired candidates by drawing legislative districts that dispersed such voters across majority-white districts. Instead, states had to create “majority-minority” districts, thereby assuring minority representation in statehouses and Congress.
In its amicus brief to the court in the Callais case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) ignored the trend after 2013 and argued that majority-minority districts were no longer necessary because “the racial gap in voter registration and turnout had largely disappeared, with minorities registering and voting at levels that sometimes surpassed the majority. Shelby County, 570 U.S. at 547-548.” To emphasize the point, the DOJ observed, “Since 2004, black voters have turned out at higher rates than white voters in two of five presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”
Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.
Alito parroted the DOJ’s sophistry: “Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”
As election experts have observed, Alito’s claim that Black and white turnout reached parity in 2 of the 5 most recent presidential elections “represents egregious cherry-picking. [H]e was not referring to recent elections, but to those in 2008 and 2012—the years that Barack Obama ran for president. In the three most recent presidential elections, the trend shows exactly the opposite. The indisputable fact is the racial turnout gap is widening, and the Roberts Court is partially responsible [because of its Shelby County decision].”
Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.
Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.
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Voting Rights Act 'On Life Support' Amid Right-Wing Attacks
"It's time for Congress to restore its full protections by passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act," said one Democratic lawmaker.
Aug 06, 2025
As the Voting Rights Act turned 60 on Wednesday, advocates highlighted right-wing attacks on the landmark legislation and called on Congress to pass a long-stagnant bill aimed at restoring and strengthening one of the most important civil rights laws in U.S. history.
The VRA, signed into law in 1965 by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson amid a groundswell of civil rights activism, was meant to ensure that state and local governments could not "deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."
However, the law has been eroded in recent decades by Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country, including through racially rigged and other gerrymandered congressional maps, restrictions on voter registration, reduction in early voting options, and voter identification laws. These measures disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters, and some GOP officials have admitted that they are intended to give Republican candidates an electoral edge.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the VRA in Shelby County v. Holder, which eviscerated a key section of the law that required jurisdictions with a history of racist disenfranchisement to obtain federal approval prior to altering voting rules. In 2021, the nation's high court voted 5-4 in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee to uphold Arizona's voting restrictions—even as Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged that they disproportionately affect minorities.
"Instead of anniversary toasts, election law experts are preparing eulogies for the landmark legislation."
Now, the Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority is poised to "end voting rights as we know them," as Mother Jones reporter Pema Levy put it Tuesday. That's because the justices said last week that they would rehear a case that could result in them striking down Section 2 of the VRA, what University of California, Los Angeles legal scholar Richard L. Hasen calls "the last remaining pillar" of the law.
"Instead of anniversary toasts, election law experts are preparing eulogies for the landmark legislation, which conservative lawyers have attacked on multiple fronts in recent years, after the U.S. Supreme Court took square aim at the statute's constitutionality last week," Jim Saksa wrote Tuesday for Democracy Docket.
As Hasen explained:
Louisiana v. Callais, the case that was the subject of last Friday's order, is a voting case over the drawing of the state's six congressional districts. Louisiana has a one-third Black population, but after the 2020 census the state Legislature drew a districting plan, passed over a Democratic governor's veto, that created only one district in which Black voters would be likely to elect their candidate of choice.
Before Callais, Black voters had successfully sued Louisiana in a case called Robinson v. Ardoin, arguing that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act required drawing a second congressional district giving Black voters that opportunity. Section 2 says minority voters should have the same chance as other voters to elect their candidates of choice, and courts have long used it to require new districts when there is a large and cohesive minority population concentrated in a given area, when white and minority voters choose different candidates, and when the minority has difficulty electing its preferred representatives.
However, a group of non-Black voters argued in a lawsuit that the consideration of race in creating a second minority-majority district violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause and the 15th Amendment's ban on federal and state governments denying citizens the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
"To me, this is it," Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, a law professor at Indiana University Bloomington, told Democracy Docket. "I would bet my left arm that they will tell us that Section 2 is in violation of the 15th Amendment."
Civil rights defenders including numerous Democratic lawmakers urged Congress to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation first introduced in 2021 whose sponsors said will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
"Sixty years ago today, the Voting Rights Act became law thanks to the perseverance of civil rights activists. Today, our sacred right to vote remains under attack," Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), one of the bill's primary sponsors, said on social media Wednesday. "We must protect our democracy and honor those who risked everything by passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act."
Although the bill passed the then-Democrat controlled House of Representatives in 2021, it failed to pass the Senate and a subsequent bid to advance the legislation failed the following year.
Calling for passage of the bill, Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.)—whose home state played a critical role in the civil rights struggle—said on the social media site Bluesky that the VRA "is on life support after being gutted by the Supreme Court and far-right judges."
The Voting Rights Act was signed into law exactly 60 years ago. But today, it is on life support after being gutted by the Supreme Court and far-right judges.It’s time for Congress to restore its full protections by passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. 🗳️
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— Rep. Terri A. Sewell (@sewell.house.gov) August 6, 2025 at 6:35 AM
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) said on Bluesky that "60 years ago today, the Voting Rights Act became law. Now, we have an administration conducting voter suppression in real time. In Texas, Republicans are trying to gut our democracy by redrawing maps to erase five Democratic seats—before a single vote is cast."
"The fight continues," Crockett added. "We owe it to those who marched, bled, and believed to keep pushing until every voice is heard and every vote counts."
The ACLU said: "Democracy can't wait. Congress must protect our voting rights at the federal level by passing the reintroduced John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act."
However, passing the bill will be next to impossible, given Republican control of both houses of Congress and President Donald Trump in the White House. That doesn't mean voting rights defenders should give up, Legal Defense Fund president and director-counsel Janai Nelson stressed Wednesday.
"If we are to continue the pursuit of the multiracial democracy that the VRA set in motion 60 years ago and if we are to honor our republican form of government founded on representation by the people, we must be unwavering in our commitment to fulfill the promise of Selma, refuse to cede any further ground, and mobilize in support of equal voting rights and fair elections," Nelson said.
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US Faces 'State of Emergency' for Civil Rights Under Trump: Urban League Report
"What we face today is a deliberate, coordinated effort to deny the future of a more just and inclusive America," said Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League, in the latest report on the "State of Black America."
Jul 18, 2025
One of America's oldest civil rights organizations warned Thursday that the country is experiencing a "dangerous tilt toward authoritarianism."
In its annual report on "The State of Black America," the National Urban League said the country is in the midst of a "state of emergency" for racial equality under the second administration of U.S. President Donald Trump as it wages war on voting rights protections; guts Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs; turns civil rights investigations into "tools of political retribution"; and embraces social media platforms that promote hate speech and false information.
"Almost daily, since January 20, 2025, the federal government, at the direction the White House, has set fire to policies and entire departments dedicated to protecting civil and human rights, providing access to an equal education, fair housing, safe and effective healthcare, and ensuring that our democratic process is adhered to across the nation," the report says.
It cites the White House's attacks on the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Supreme Court, it says, dealt the "first seismic crack" to the law in 2013 with the Shelby County v. Holder decision, which got rid of the requirement that states with a history of race-based voter suppression clear new voting laws with the Department of Justice.
"Dozens of states have seized on this weakened federal oversight to pass restrictive voting laws—from voter ID requirements that disproportionately burden Black and Latino voters, to aggressive voter roll purges that remove eligible citizens from voter lists, to reduced polling hours and locations in communities of color," wrote Janai Nelson, the president of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in one essay.
Since then, Nelson writes, "The Trump administration has launched a full-scale assault on what remains."
Nelson notes the president's "sweeping executive order requiring individuals to show documentary proof of citizenship in order to register to vote—and permitting only a narrow set of documents, such as a passport, that many Americans don't have easy access to."
She also notes that the administration "shifted the focus of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division away from protecting voting rights and toward investigating voter fraud, even though such fraud is exceedingly rare."
In another essay, Samantha Tweedy, the CEO of the Black Economic Alliance, described "an all-out assault on... Black liberty, livelihood, history, prosperity, economic power, and opportunity," being carried out "under the false premise and scapegoating of 'Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.'"
The Trump administration has aggressively sought to purge DEI initiatives and affirmative action from all sectors of public life, banning them from use in the federal government and putting pressure on private corporations and universities to abandon them as well.
Fueling this, Tweedy says, is the "destructive lie" that "for Black people to succeed, others must lose out." The report goes on to cite statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank, Citi, and McKinsey showing that closing economic disparities increases economic prosperity for the entire country.
One of the engines propelling the Trump administration's attack on civil rights has been the DOJ's Civil Rights division itself, which the report says has been "hollowed out and repurposed" to go after universities that pursue DEI initiatives.
The report also singled out Harmeet Dhillon, who Trump tapped to lead the Civil Rights Division, for her past assertions that the 2020 election was stolen and her writings arguing against the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would have restored power to the original law.
The report also highlighted the recent surge of racist rhetoric on billionaire-owned social media platforms, which have abandoned many content moderation policies in recent years.
The report especially singled out the violent shift on Elon Musk's X, which saw a dramatic increase in hate speech against racial minorities and LGBTQ+ people after the billionaire bought the platform.
"We are witnessing something more than policy shifts," said the Urban League's president and CEO, Marc H. Morial, in the report's foreword. "We are watching an attempt to turn back the clock to an era when the full humanity of all Americans was not recognized—when the idea of true equality was treated as a threat to the social order."
"What we face today is a deliberate, coordinated effort to deny the future of a more just and inclusive America," Morial said. "And the architects of this effort have made their intentions plain: they would rather see our democracy crumble than cede power to a multiracial, equitable society."
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Running in Circles on Racial Justice
Hard-fought victories in terms of racial justice in the U.S. are always met with a vicious backlash that makes progress a circular motion where we end up, it seems, where we began.
Jan 20, 2025
We keep running in circles when it comes to addressing racial justice in the U.S. This means that with every advance we almost come back to the same place and must fight the battles all over again. It doesn't mean that progress has not been made, but the progress retrogresses due to the immediate backlash that charges any advance to rectify past racial injustices as an affront to white people. At best there is an ebb and flow when it comes to rectifying the racial harms and damages of the past.
Race history and the many initiatives to rectify past wrongs is more of a circle than a linear line. It may be an expanding circle considering advances, but for every victory won there is a vicious throw back. It is almost like the 1993 movie Groundhog Day where morning after morning we awaken to history repeating itself, and where victories of racial justice are swept away by the courts or a change in the body politic. The struggle continues, and in many cases, we must begin again.
Every racial justice victory in the United States came about because of the Civil War and the various modes of resistance employed by victims of racial injustices. Mass protests and resistance has generally forced those in power to seek easy answers to placate the anger of the victims of racial injustice. But every attempt to satisfy and pacify the various protests is met with vociferous protests that erase hard fought victories. Just a few examples over four centuries in U.S. history serve as evidence. At each juncture of political protest those in power have historically responded with various initiatives designed to calm the uprisings and unrest. However, any advance is quickly eradicated under the guise of reverse discrimination.
If the United States is ever going to create a society of real growth and opportunity, it needs to stop chasing its tail.
After the Civil War, one man, one vote was militarily imposed resulting in the elections of Black men to numerous political offices in the South. With those advances came the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865 abolishing slavery. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted citizenship to people born in the U.S. This served as a response to the 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott decision that ruled Blacks were not citizens. The 14th Amendment passed in 1868 addressed and attempted to rectify state laws that abridged the rights of Black people. In 1870 the 15th Amendment was adopted that attempted to grant the right to vote to Black men (It should be noted that it wasn't until 1920 that women had the right to vote). In 1871 another Civil Rights Act was passed, also known as the Klu Klux Klan Act, which was a response to the growing terrorism used by whites against Blacks and advances in civil rights. These acts of terror were designed to take away the vote, enforce racial codes, and re-impose restrictions on Black people that had been granted post-Civil War. The backlash turned back the clock on the numerous advances that sought to correct the racial injustices of the past.
In 1865 Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and Andrew Johnson became President. Andrew Johnson was a Southerner who worked to turn back the numerous advances made in racial justice. Under his administration amnesty was granted to Confederates. Confiscated lands (plantations) were returned to those who rebelled against the Union. The last remaining Union troops were withdrawn from the South in the Compromise of 1877 resulting in the reestablishment of pre-Civil War policies that completed the circle of restoring white Southern rule, reinstating the Black Codes, and allowing states to make policies that re-created de facto enslavement. The circle turned 360 degrees from voting rights, citizenship, anti-terrorism, social rectification, and attempts at inclusion to making it virtually impossible for Blacks to vote, live and work, or engage in the routines of life without fear and intimidation. Reconstruction, a response to racial injustices and calls to the nation to be inclusive and equitable, was short lived—from 1865-1877—and in that short time it ushered in amendments and civil rights acts. However, it was attacked from the beginning, sabotaged, and died because of white backlash. Most of the steps forward were spurned within 12 short years, and all the advances undone. The circle of racial justice took Blacks from winning to having to fight all over again.
In response to the racial justice organizing in the 20th century and the social unrest through demonstrations, sit-ins, and mass marches, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. This act prohibited discrimination in labor and attempted to end segregation in public facilities, public schools, and federally funded programs (keep in mind that 10 years prior, in 1954, the Supreme Court had already ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional and ordered schools to desegregate). In 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed to challenge the many schemes employed by states to abridge the ability of Blacks to vote. It also required Southern states to seek permission to substantively change voting practices. However in 2013, the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder gutted these protections arguing that they were "based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day." Hence voting protections enacted in 1965 were gutted effectively rendering the act a relic of the past. This is an example of the ebb, or the circular motion, of the nature of racial rectification in the U.S.
In the 21st century white resistance to the freedoms of Blacks to move and live within the society coupled with continued fears of whites towards Black people resulted in "Stand Your Ground" laws. These were boilerplate legislation written by the American Legislative Exchange Council and offered to state legislators which produced glaring and frightening consequences for Black people. Black people were shot for ringing the wrong door bell, or for being in the wrong neighborhood. But all of this played into a larger scheme to erode equal rights and turn back the clock on racial rectification.
The reaction to racial justice is relentless and comes whenever strides are made to make the nation more inclusive. The Black Lives Matter movement emerged, trying to hold people and society accountable. The movement was spurred on by the killings of Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery by vigilantes. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, and Philando Castile were examples of police killings. In the streets voices chanted, "Defund the police," and bodies blocked expressways and intersections. Political leaders and bodies across the country entertained discussions on the matter. Corporate America responded along with other entities employing "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" (DEI) measures. DEI became part of the discussion in the economic, political, and educational arena. The corporate world responded to the various outcries of disadvantaged groups that included racial and the LGBTQIA community and sought ways to demonstrate their desire to include and sell to these groups. Among those employing DEI initiatives were Amazon, Meta (FaceBook), McDonald's, Walmart, Ford, Lowe's, John Deere, American Airlines, Boeing, Jack Daniel's (Brown-Forman), Caterpillar, Harley-Davidson, Molson Coors, Nissan, Polaris, Toyota, and Anheuser-Busch.
The criticisms however grew louder as the "Turn Back the Clock" and Make America Great Again activists homed in on "wokeness" and began to attack those corporations for their support of racial justice and gay rights. The 2023 Supreme Court decision on college admissions, which struck down affirmative action programs declaring that race cannot be a factor in college admissions, was used to advance charges of reverse discrimination and of lowering standards. Then with the election of President Donald Trump the attacks on DEI found greater energy and corporations demonstrated lesser courage. Each of the corporations mentioned have since rolled back or eliminated their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. This is another example of a 360-degree turn in the struggle for racial justice and inclusion within the society, culture, and workplace.
Blacks have been historically wronged and remain disadvantaged. We continue to lag behind our white counterparts in terms of education, economics, and wealth. If progress is linear then we could surmise that at some point Blacks would catch up to whites. Instead, in most categories, the gaps and disparities have grown wider. The only way to explain this phenomenon is that we are engaged in a circle of gaining and then losing. The circle may grow larger signifying the progress being made, but the hard-fought victories in terms of racial justice are always met with a vicious backlash that makes progress a circular motion where we end up, it seems, where we began.
If the United States is ever going to create a society of real growth and opportunity, it needs to stop chasing its tail. It needs to change its belief that correcting past wrongs is somehow to penalize someone else. The irony is that those who complain about reverse discrimination are the ones who have been the beneficiaries of a system of discrimination. A strong society must come to terms with its history; tell the stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly; and muster the courage to create and maintain policies, programs, and systems that correct the sins of the past.
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Senate Dems Reintroduce Bill to 'Restore Critical Safeguards' of Voting Rights Act
One advocate said the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is "critically important for Congress to pass at a moment in our history when the freedom to vote is under attack in our nation."
Feb 29, 2024
Civil and voting rights advocates on Thursday cheered the reintroduction of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), S.B. 4—a companion to H.R. 14, introduced last September—is named in honor of John Lewis, a late civil rights icon and longtime Georgia congressman. Republicans filibustered the previous iteration of the bill.
"In our nation, there's no freedom more fundamental than the right to vote," said Durbin. "But over the past several years, there has been a sustained effort to chip away at the protections guaranteed to every American under the Voting Rights Act. That's why we've joined together today to reintroduce a bill that would not only restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act, but strengthen it."
We just re-introduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I’m joined by @SenSchumer, @SenatorWarnock, and civil rights group leaders now.
Our message it’s clear: we must ensure that democracy works for all of us. https://t.co/SH7ujaLfjw
— Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) February 29, 2024
Warnock said: "I was Congressman Lewis' pastor, but he was my mentor and hero because he believed voting is a sacred undertaking that's about more than a person's voice, it's about their humanity. That's why this legislation is more important than ever, because the fight to protect voting rights and voting access for every eligible American remains unfinished and even worse, so much of the progress Congressman Lewis fought for is being rolled back."
NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Janai Nelson called the bill "a vital piece of legislation that will safeguard the fundamental right to vote by strengthening and restoring the Voting Rights Act, one of the most impactful civil rights laws in our nation's history."
"It is fitting that this critical legislation is put forward as we approach the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when Black Americans—including civil rights hero John Lewis—endured brutal state-sponsored violence while marching for basic rights, which led to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act."
"The fight to protect voting rights and voting access for every eligible American remains unfinished and even worse, so much of the progress Congressman Lewis fought for is being rolled back."
The landmark VRA was meant to ensure that state and local governments could not "deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."
However, the VRA has been eroded in recent decades by Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country, including with restrictions on voter registration, reduction in early voting options, and voter identification laws. These measures disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters, and some GOP officials have admitted that they are intended to give Republican candidates an electoral edge.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the VRA in Shelby County v. Holder, which eviscerated a key section of the law that required jurisdictions with a history of racist disenfranchisement to obtain federal approval prior to altering voting rules. In 2021, the nation's high court voted 5-4 in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee to uphold Arizona's voting restrictions—even as Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged that they disproportionately affect minorities.
"Since Shelby and more recently Brnovich v. DNC made it even harder to challenge discriminatory voting laws, states have continued to limit access to the ballot and use the redistricting process to dilute Black voters' voices," Nelson asserted. "States that were formerly protected—including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas—are all places where LDF has been forced to bring recent litigation to challenge unlawful racial discrimination in voting."
Common Cause president Virginia Kase Solomón asserted that the protections proposed in the new bill "are critically important for Congress to pass at a moment in our history when the freedom to vote is under attack in our nation."
"A bedrock of our democracy, the freedom to vote has been under sustained assault since the 2020 election with dozens of anti-voter laws passed in states all across the country to make it harder for Americans—particularly in Black and brown communities—to have a say in choosing their elected leaders," she added.
Arturo Vargas, CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said in a statement that "in the Shelby decision, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that there is still discrimination in our nation's electoral process—and this bill would provide strong and robust safeguards to combat it."
"We urge Congress to work in a bipartisan manner to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and help make our democracy more responsive to all of our nation's voices," he added.
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US Democracy Defenders Applaud Fresh Push for 'Urgently Needed' Voting Rights Bill
"It will take passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to curb this new generation of assaults on the freedom to vote," said one campaigner.
Sep 19, 2023
Although it is nearly certain to go nowhere in a Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives, pro-democracy groups nationwide celebrated on Tuesday as Congresswoman Terri Sewell reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
"Generations of Americans—many in my hometown of Selma, Alabama—marched, fought, and even died for the equal right of all Americans to vote," Sewell (D-Ala.) said in a statement. "But today, their legacy and our very democracy are under attack as MAGA extremists target voters with new laws to restrict voting access."
"The fight for voting rights has never been more urgent," she argued, explaining that the legislation—named for the late Democratic Georgia congressman and civil rights leader—aims to restore and modernize the full protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), which was gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court a decade ago in Shelby County v. Holder.
The bill is backed by every House Democrat but faces tough odds in both chambers. Early last year, Democratic right-wing Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), who switched from Democrat to Independent in December, worked with Republicans to block a megabill that included the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis legislation.
Still, U.S. advocacy groups on Tuesday applauded the lawmakers' renewed push for federal voting rights reforms—as they did in July, when Democratic leaders reintroduced the Freedom to Vote Act.
"The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is key in preserving democracy, full stop," declared Public Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert. "A decade after the Supreme Court gutted 'preclearance' protection in the Voting Rights Act, more than half of U.S. states have passed over 90 laws that make it harder to vote for communities of color, in particular."
"Without this legislation, we risk further entrenching anti-democratic, partisan forces that want to choose their own voters," Gilbert warned.
According to the Declaration for American Democracy coalition:
In the last decade since the Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court decision gutted key enforcement mechanisms in the Voting Rights Act, at least 29 states have passed 94 laws making it harder to vote, with at least 11 states enacting 13 restrictive voting laws in 2023 alone.
Attacks on our freedom to vote disproportionately impact Black, Latino, Asian, Native, and other voters of color. Since Shelby v. Holder, the racial turnout gap has grown significantly in 5 of the 6 states previously covered by the preclearance sections of the Voting Rights Act.
Sylvia Albert, Common Cause's director of voting and elections, stressed that "this ongoing effort to suppress the vote harkens back to the shameful Jim Crow era. At that time, it took the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and rigorous enforcement by the U.S. Department of Justice to curb the wholesale abuses and attacks on the freedom to vote."
"Today it will take passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to curb this new generation of assaults on the freedom to vote and to strengthen the ability of the Department of Justice to protect that sacred freedom with the tools it used for decades," she asserted, specifically calling out Republican-controlled state legislatures that have tried "to silence Black and Brown voters after they showed up to vote in record numbers during the 2020 election."
Noting that the VRA "has a long history of bipartisan support," Leslie Proll of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said: "We applaud our elected officials who have responded to the call of the majority of people in this country who support new legislation to protect the vote. We need federal action now."
Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, also highlighted previous bipartisan support for the VRA, pointing out that "the last time the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized, in 2006, it gained 98 votes in the Senate." He called on Congress to swiftly pass the "urgently needed" John Lewis bill and the Freedom to Vote Act.
Organizations focused on key issues like abortion rights and the climate emergency also demanded action on the proposal.
"This legislation is long overdue," said a 15-member coalition that included Clean Water Action, Climate Hawks Vote, the Climate Reality Project, Earthjustice, EDF Action, Environmental Law & Policy Center, Greenpeace USA, Interfaith Power & Light, League of Conservation Voters, the National Wildlife Federation, NextGen America, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and Zero Hour.
"We cannot effectively tackle the critical issues our nation faces—like combating the climate crisis, advancing environmental justice, and protecting our air, lands, waters, biodiversity, wildlife, and oceans—without fixing the broken system that caters to corporate polluters and disenfranchises too many voters," the coalition argued.
Meanwhile, NARAL Pro-Choice America said on social media that "voting rights and reproductive freedom are deeply intertwined."
"Anti-abortion extremists attack voting rights knowing that it is critical to electing repro champions," the organization added. "Congress MUST pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act."
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'Our Democracy Demands It': Rights Groups Cheer as Dems Revive Freedom to Vote Act
"We are in dangerous territory," warned one activist. "We must enshrine our democratic freedoms in federal legislation that would blunt the multipronged attacks on our democracy."
Jul 18, 2023
Democracy defenders on Tuesday applauded as Democratic leaders from both chambers of Congress came together to reintroduce the Freedom to Vote Act, which aims to improve voter access and electoral administration, boost election integrity, and increase civic participation and empowerment.
"Today’s introduction of the Freedom to Vote Act is the first step to injecting a renewed commitment to democratic principles," said Christine Wood and Allison Pulliam, co-directors of the Declaration for American Democracy coalition. "We believe every eligible voter should have their vote counted, every candidate should be able to run without caving in to big influence and big money, and every elected official should be beholden to constituents first."
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) joined the bill's sponsors—Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.)—and other Democrats for a Tuesday press conference, during which they condemned MAGA Republicans' attacks on U.S. democracy.
"These attacks demand a federal response," said Klobuchar. "The Freedom to Vote Act will set basic national standards to make sure all Americans can cast their ballots in the way that works best for them, regardless of what ZIP code they live in. This bill will ensure Americans can request a mail-in ballot and have access to drop boxes, have at least two weeks of early voting, and can register to vote on Election Day."
"It's past time for Congress to act and protect Americans' freedom to vote."
While the bill is unlikely to reach the desk of President Joe Biden—who is running for reelection—during this term, given the GOP-controlled House and divided Senate hamstrung by the filibuster, campaigners echoed Democrats' assertions of the need for the bill's reforms.
"It has been 10 years since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted voting rights, and two years since a president attempted to overturn the will of voters to remain in power," noted Public Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert—calling out former President Donald Trump, who is seeking the GOP's 2024 nomination despite inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
"Between the Shelby v. Holder decision and extremists in Congress and state houses—supported by wealthy interests who don't want democracy—we are in dangerous territory," Gilbert warned. "We must enshrine our democratic freedoms in federal legislation that would blunt the multipronged attacks on our democracy."
Stand Up America founder and president Sean Eldridge agreed, declaring that "it's past time for Congress to act and protect Americans' freedom to vote. As MAGA Republicans continue to erect barriers to the ballot box, particularly for communities of color, we need national standards to ensure voting access for every American, no matter where they live."
Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of Black Voters Matter, said that "the reintroduction of the Freedom to Vote Act is essential to overcoming the obstacles of new voter suppression laws we see taking shape every day in states like Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. In addition to the wave of voter suppression laws seen in 2021 and 2022, this year has seen hundreds of additional voter suppression bills attempted, and at least 11 states have passed such restrictions."
"Just yesterday, lawmakers in Alabama voted to advance a new congressional map that does not include a second majority-Black district, completely ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling that mandates the state's maps must include this majority-Black district," he pointed out. "The fight for our rights is playing out on the state level and continues to permeate our daily lives in the South. That is why national legislation that is pro-voter and anti-corruption is absolutely necessary at this moment in history."
A coalition of climate and environmental groups—Clean Water Action, Climate Hawks Vote, Earthjustice, Endangered Species Coalition, Greenpeace USA, Interfaith Power & Light, League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and WE ACT for Environmental Justice—also celebrated the bill's reintroduction.
"While we recognize that our democracy has never truly worked for all Americans, the Freedom to Vote Act will help move us closer to the mountaintop, where every American has equitable access to the ballot, and a brighter light will shine on the fossil fuel billionaires and corporations who pour big money into anti-environmental politicians and misleading ads hampering our ability to combat the climate crisis," the coalition said.
Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center and a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, highlighted that "the aims of the Freedom to Vote Act—prohibiting partisan gerrymandering, protecting the freedom to vote, and increasing the transparency of money spent in federal elections—are supported by a significant majority of Americans, regardless of party."
While opposition to the Freedom to Vote Act has mostly come from GOP lawmakers, some Democrats have helped block it. Early last year, Democratic right-wing Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), who is suspected of considering a 2024 presidential run, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), who switched from Democrat to Independent in December, teamed up with Republicans to kill a proposed change to the Senate filibuster that would have cleared the way for passing a voting rights package.
At the time, lawmakers were fighting to pass a megabill that included not only the Freedom to Vote Act but also the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation named for a late Democratic congressman and civil rights icon. Some campaigners also emphasized the importance of the latter on Tuesday.
"Along with the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act's protections against racial discrimination, the Freedom to Vote Act has the best solutions available to strengthen our democracy for all," asserted Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. "Congress must advance the Freedom to Vote Act. Our democracy demands it."
Leslie Proll, senior director of the voting rights program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, similarly stressed the importance of both bills.
"We urge both chambers of Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act so we can build a multiracial democracy that works for all of us," said Proll. "We also look forward to Congress reintroducing and passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act."
Common Cause interim co-president Marilyn Carpinteyro on Tuesday sent a letter to all members of Congress on behalf of her group and its more than 1.5 million members and supporters "in strong support of the Freedom to Vote Act and in strong opposition to the 'American Confidence in Elections' (ACE) Act," which was introduced by House Republicans earlier this month.
"The ACE Act is a giant step backward and would silence the voices of everyday Americans by putting up barriers to voting and by allowing millions of dollars more in secret money to infiltrate our political system," Carpinteyro wrote. "To strengthen free and fair elections and help get big, secret money out of politics, Congress must instead pass the Freedom to Vote Act."
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10 Years After Supreme Court Gutted Voting Rights, Advocates Say Congress Must Reverse Damage
At least 29 of the voter suppression laws passed since the Shelby v. Holder County decision would have been subject to the preclearance provision that the ruling ended.
Jun 25, 2023
Since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Shelby County v. Holder exactly 10 years ago Sunday, at least 29 states have enacted nearly 100 restrictive laws including many that are racially discriminatory, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.
The nonpartisan law and policy think tank said Friday that at least one-third of the voting restrictions—29 of them—passed in the last decade were enacted in 11 states which would have been subject to preclearance, the anti-discrimination rule that provided crucial protections as part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) before Shelby was decided.
Under preclearance, jurisdictions that had histories of barring people from voting based on their race were required to get federal approval before introducing new voting policies.
"Without this guardrail, voters lost a bulwark against discriminatory voting policies, and states previously subject to preclearance were free to implement discriminatory restrictions on voting access without advance checks," wrote Jasleen Singh and Sara Carter at the Brennan Center. "Many states did exactly that. Along with a prior decision narrowly interpreting constitutional protections for voting rights, Shelby County also sent a message to the nation that the federal courts would no longer play their historic role as a robust protector of voting rights."
"Since the 2020 election, 20 states passed 32 laws restricting mail voting access. Overall, 22 states passed 41 such laws since Shelby County. Some of these new restrictions have a clear racially discriminatory impact."
Texas wasted no time in announcing that a strict voter ID law, previously blocked by preclearance, would go into effect the same day that Shelby was handed down. Similar restrictions, which have been found to have a disproportionate effect on low-income voters and people of color, followed in at least nine states including Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina.
Since 2020—when the coronavirus pandemic upended voting and Republicans spread baseless lies about so-called "voter fraud" after former President Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection—GOP state legislators have largely turned their focus to restricting measures that offer flexibility to voters, such as mail-in ballots, said the Brennan Center.
"Since the 2020 election, 20 states passed 32 laws restricting mail voting access. Overall, 22 states passed 41 such laws since Shelby County," wrote Singh and Carter. "Some of these new restrictions have a clear racially discriminatory impact."
"For example," they added, "the Brennan Center studied a 2021 Texas law requiring a voter to include their driver's license number or the last four digits of their social security number on mail ballot applications and mail ballots and requiring the number to match the individual’s voter file data. During Texas's March 2022 primary, thousands of mail ballots and mail ballot applications were rejected, disproportionately cast by Latino, Asian, and Black voters."
A number of state legislatures have also taken advantage of the Shelby ruling as they have drawn new district maps.
Sherrilyn Ifill, former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a senior fellow at the Ford Foundation, said Sunday that she knew in 2013 that the Shelby ruling was "catastrophic," but did not predict that the Republican Party would "turn voter suppression into part of its national policy."
Before 2013, said Democracy Docket, which offers analysis and expert commentary on voting rights, the U.S. Department of Justice had blocked more than 3,000 proposed voter suppression laws under the VRA.
The Brennan Center pointed out that within its ruling in 2013, the Supreme Court stated that Congress could pass a new
"coverage formula" to determine which jurisdictions would be covered by a preclearance provision.
"And it should," wrote Singh and Carter, "by passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the Voting Rights Act to its full strength, as well as the Freedom to Vote Act to set nondiscriminatory baseline national standards for voting and elections."
In an op-ed at Newsweek on Sunday, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) wrote that another voting rights-related ruling by the Supreme Court earlier this month, Allen v. Milligan, was "energizing" as the high court affirmed that Alabama had racially gerrymandered its electoral map.
However, she said, "we cannot rely on this Supreme Court, or the courts generally, to consistently protect our freedom to vote. We must, together, act."
In addition to passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, she wrote, "we must also engage in robust voter education and outreach efforts, empowering communities with knowledge and resources to help overcome anti-voting barriers."
While Ifill said she did not predict the extent to which the GOP would go to stop marginalized communities from voting, she "also did not predict the extraordinary determination of voters, who, even at the height of a deadly global pandemic refused to be bowed," she said. "That they would stand in line and risk their very lives to vote, despite efforts of Republicans and the indifference of the Supreme Court.
"The Shelby decision was catastrophic, yes," she added. "But we didn't give in and we won't give in. We will find a way to overcome every obstacle to our right to participate as first class citizens in American political life. We will vote and organize and litigate, and legislate until we win."
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