Forty-eight senators introduced legislation on Wednesday to restore the Voting Rights Act after it was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013.


If a plaintiff proves these preconditions exist, then the plaintiff must additionally show, using the remaining Senate Factors and other evidence, that under the "totality of the circumstances", the jurisdiction's redistricting plan or use of at-large or multimember elections diminishes the ability of the minority group to elect candidates of its choice.

Congress intended for the coverage formula to encompass the most pervasively discriminatory jurisdictions. [124] Although the Court had earlier held in Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections (1959) that literacy tests did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment,[125] in Morgan the Court held that Congress could enforce Fourteenth Amendment rights—such as the right to vote—by prohibiting conduct it deemed to interfere with such rights, even if that conduct may not be independently unconstitutional.

The types of jurisdictions that the coverage formula applies to include states and "political subdivisions" of states.

The Act also contains "special provisions" that apply to only certain jurisdictions. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did little to help African Americans register to vote. [116] In covered jurisdictions, less than one-third (29.3%) of the African American population was registered in 1965; by 1967, this number increased to more than half (52.1%),[58]:702 and a majority of African American residents became registered to vote in 9 of the 13 Southern states. Bob Fitch photography archive, © Stanford University Libraries On 6 August 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, calling the day “a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield” (Johnson, “Remarks in the Capitol Rotunda”).

Thus, between 1957 and 1964, the African-American voter registration rate in the South increased only marginally even though the Department litigated 71 voting rights lawsuits. [17]:551–552, 916, Before 2000, the "discriminatory purpose" prong of Section 5 was understood to mean any discriminatory purpose, which is the same standard used to determine whether discrimination is unconstitutional. “At the time the Constitution was framed,” explains University of Chicago Law Professor Philip Kurland, “it provided for only a limited franchise.” That franchise in 1789 went almost exclusively to white males; most Negroes were slaves, with no rights at all, and it was to be 131 years before women would be permitted to vote. Section 4(f)(4) applies to any jurisdiction encompassed by the Section 4(b) coverage formula where more than 5% of the citizen voting age population are members of a single language minority group. The assignment of federal examiners was otherwise necessary to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments. From 1868 to 1888, electoral fraud and violence throughout the South suppressed the African-American vote. [lower-alpha 1] Under the Gingles test, plaintiffs must show the existence of three preconditions: The first precondition is known as the "compactness" requirement and concerns whether a majority-minority district can be created. Ultimately, the bill was reported out of committee on April 9 by a 12-4 vote without a recommendation. [17]:515, In the wake of the events in Selma, President Johnson, addressing a televised joint session of Congress on March 15, called on legislators to enact expansive voting rights legislation. The poll tax prohibition gained Speaker of the House John McCormack's support.

[119]:654–656, By enfranchising racial minorities, the Act facilitated a political realignment of the Democratic and Republican parties. Additionally, the Court upheld the provision lowering the minimum voting age to 18 in federal elections, but it held that Congress exceeded its power by lowering the voting age to 18 in state elections; this precipitated the ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment the following year, which lowered the voting age in all elections to 18. 6400.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was readopted and strengthened in … [29]:6 Additionally, the bill included a "bail in" provision under which federal courts could subject discriminatory non-covered jurisdictions to remedies contained in the special provisions.

[107]:695 Relying on the Senate report for the Act, the Court reasoned that the retrogression standard was the correct interpretation of the term "discriminatory effect" because Section 5's purpose is " 'to insure that [the gains thus far achieved in minority political participation] shall not be destroyed through new [discriminatory] procedures' ". The only exceptions are that the assistant may not be an agent of the person's employer or union. The committee eventually approved the bill on May 12, but it did not file its committee report until June 1. A majority-vote requirement may cause a minority group's candidate of choice, who would have won the election with a simple plurality of votes, to lose after a majority of voters unite behind another candidate in a runoff election.

For example, the bail-in of New Mexico in 1984 applied for 10 years and required preclearance of only redistricting plans.

Under Section 13, the Attorney General may terminate the certification of a jurisdiction if 1) more than 50% of the jurisdiction's minority voting age population is registered to vote, and 2) there is no longer reasonable cause to believe that residents may experience voting discrimination.

The act showed that the Federal Government would not allow the southern states to do as they wished. In 1982, Congress amended Section 4(a) to make bailout easier to achieve in two ways. A plurality of the Court reasoned that no uniform, non-dilutive "benchmark" size for a governing body exists, making relief under Section 2 impossible. [131]:334–335[132]:76 The Court also upheld the constitutionality of the 1965 coverage formula, saying that it was "rational in both practice and theory" and that the bailout provision provided adequate relief for jurisdictions that may not deserve coverage.

[32]:2006–2007 Because courts have interpreted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to prohibit only intentional discrimination, a court may bail in a jurisdiction only if the plaintiff proves that the jurisdiction enacted or operated a voting practice to purposely discriminate.

§§ 10301–10314

Their disenfranchisement sparked a movement across the country that demanded equal protection under the law and the right to vote. [42]:207–208 Section 14(c)(2) defines "political subdivision" to mean any county, parish, or "other subdivision of a State which conducts registration for voting. History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, “Voting Rights Act of 1965,” https://history.house.gov/Records-and-Research/Featured-Content/Engrossed-Bill/ 7896. .

[106]:311, In 2003, the Supreme Court held in Georgia v. Ashcroft[45] that courts should not determine that a new redistricting plan has a retrogressive effect solely because the plan decreases the number of minority-majority districts.

[14]:69 However, he did not reveal the proposal's content or when it would come before Congress.

Jurisdictions certified to receive federal observers under Section 3(a) are not subject to preclearance.[93]:236–237.

In later cases, the Supreme Court is more likely to disregard one of its previous judgments that lacks a written opinion, but lower courts must respect the Supreme Court's unwritten summary affirmances as being as equally binding on them as Supreme Court judgments with written opinions. [61] The Court emphasized that the existence of the three Gingles preconditions may be insufficient to prove liability for vote dilution through submergence if other factors weigh against such a determination, especially in lawsuits challenging redistricting plans.

[40], Throughout its history, the coverage formula remained controversial because it singled out certain jurisdictions, most of which were in the Deep South. [15], To enforce the Reconstruction Amendments, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts in the 1870s.

The Court held that Section 5 constituted a valid use of Congress's power to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment, reasoning that "exceptional circumstances" of pervasive racial discrimination, combined with the inadequacy of case-by-case litigation in ending that discrimination, justified the preclearance requirement. [17]:754[81] Starting in 2013, lower federal courts began to consider various challenges to voter ID laws brought under Section 2.

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