The Voting Rights Act
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Summmary
The article explains why the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was necessary, how it worked, why it was considered effective, how the Supreme Court weakened it, and what could be done to restore stronger voting-rights protections.
The article begins by describing how Southern states suppressed Black voting after the Civil War despite the Fifteenth Amendment’s guarantee that voting rights could not be denied because of race. States used literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, registration barriers, and violence to prevent Black citizens from voting. Earlier federal efforts failed to stop these practices.
The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment. It banned discriminatory voting practices, suspended literacy tests, allowed federal oversight in areas with severe discrimination, and created the “preclearance” system under Section 5. Preclearance required certain jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing voting laws. This preventive system became the law’s most powerful tool.
The article argues that the Act was highly successful. Black voter registration and participation increased sharply, especially in Southern states, and Black political representation expanded. The law worked because it created strong federal enforcement mechanisms instead of relying only on lawsuits after discrimination occurred.
The article then explains how the Supreme Court weakened the Act through several major decisions:
- Shelby County v. Holder (2013) invalidated the coverage formula used for preclearance, effectively disabling Section 5.
- Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) made some Section 2 voting-discrimination lawsuits harder to win.
- Louisiana v. Callais (2026) further limited the use of the Act in redistricting cases involving minority representation.
Critics describe these rulings as “eviscerating” the Voting Rights Act because they removed its strongest preventive protections and narrowed remaining legal remedies. Supporters of the decisions argue they protect federalism, state authority over elections, and constitutional limits on race-based policies.
Finally, the article outlines several possible ways to restore stronger voting-rights protections:
- creating a new preclearance formula,
- strengthening Section 2,
- establishing national voting-access standards,
- passing state voting-rights acts,
- continuing court enforcement of remaining protections,
- or adopting a constitutional amendment explicitly guaranteeing the right to vote.
The conclusion argues that democracy requires active enforcement of voting rights and that constitutional promises alone are not enough without institutions strong enough to protect equal access to voting.
Why it Was Needed
The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, says that the right to vote cannot be denied or abridged because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” On paper, Black men gained the constitutional right to vote after the Civil War. In practice, that right was systematically destroyed across much of the South after Reconstruction.
States and local officials used many devices to suppress Black voting. These included literacy tests, poll taxes, “understanding” clauses, grandfather clauses, all-white primaries, intimidation, economic retaliation, purges, registration delays, and outright violence. The Department of Justice explains that by 1965 earlier federal efforts had achieved only “modest success overall” and had been almost entirely ineffective in some areas; the murders of voting-rights activists in Mississippi and other acts of violence drew national attention to the problem.
The point of these tactics was not subtle. They were designed to keep Black citizens from voting while pretending to be neutral rules about literacy, taxes, registration, or election procedure. A rule did not have to say “Black people cannot vote” in order to have that effect. Local officials could apply tests unfairly, reject applications arbitrarily, or make the registration process humiliating and dangerous.
The civil-rights movement forced the issue into national consciousness. The Selma voting-rights campaign, the attack on marchers on Bloody Sunday in 1965, and the broader pattern of violence against voting-rights workers made clear that ordinary litigation was not enough. The country needed a federal law strong enough to stop discrimination before it could shape elections.
What the Voting Rights Act Did
The Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965. Its stated purpose was to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment. The National Archives identifies the Act as “An act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States and for other purposes.”
The Act had several major parts.
First, it prohibited voting practices that denied or abridged the right to vote because of race or color. This became the foundation for later Section 2 litigation.
Second, it suspended literacy tests and similar devices in covered jurisdictions. The Justice Department notes that Section 4 established a formula identifying areas where racial discrimination in voting had been especially prevalent, and that one of the first remedies was the suspension of tests or devices such as literacy tests.
Third, it allowed federal examiners and observers to enter jurisdictions where local officials had blocked equal voting access. This was crucial because the problem was often local administration: who could register, whose ballot counted, and whether intimidation was tolerated.
Fourth, and most powerfully, it created preclearance under Section 5. Covered jurisdictions had to obtain approval from the federal government before changing voting laws or procedures. That meant discriminatory changes could be stopped before they took effect.
Preclearance was the heart of the law. Without it, voting-rights enforcement depended on lawsuits after damage had already been done. With preclearance, jurisdictions with histories of discrimination had to show in advance that proposed changes would not worsen minority voters’ position.
Was the Voting Rights Act Effective?
Yes. By almost any historical measure, the Voting Rights Act was highly effective.
It sharply increased Black voter registration and participation in areas where suppression had been strongest. One major study found that Southern states using literacy tests saw Black voter registration rates rise from 33.8 percent to 56.5 percent between 1964 and 1968, a 67 percent increase.
The Act also changed political representation. As more Black citizens registered and voted, Black candidates had a better chance to win office, and elected officials had stronger incentives to respond to Black communities. A 2023 study summarized by Oxford Economics reported that the Voting Rights Act led to greater racial representation in local governments across the U.S. South.
The Act was effective because it attacked the central problem directly. It did not merely announce a right. It created enforcement machinery. It recognized that local discrimination could be persistent, adaptive, and disguised. When one tactic was banned, another could replace it. Preclearance forced jurisdictions with bad records to justify changes before they could be used.
This was one reason the law was repeatedly reauthorized by Congress. Congress concluded more than once that voting discrimination had not disappeared, even though its forms had changed.
Why the Supreme Court Weakened It
The Supreme Court did not repeal the Voting Rights Act all at once. It weakened it in stages.
Shelby County v. Holder, 2013
In Shelby County v. Holder, the Court struck down Section 4(b), the coverage formula that determined which jurisdictions had to get preclearance under Section 5. The Court did not strike down Section 5 itself, but without a valid coverage formula, the preclearance system became largely inoperative.
The majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, argued that the formula was based on old data and did not reflect current conditions. The Court emphasized principles of federalism and what it described as the equal sovereignty of the states. In effect, the majority said Congress could still require preclearance, but it needed a new formula based on modern evidence.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent argued that Congress had compiled a large record showing that preclearance was still needed. Her position was that the Court should defer to Congress’s constitutional authority to enforce the Reconstruction Amendments. Critics of Shelby County often summarize the problem this way: the Act was working, and the Court treated its success as evidence that it was no longer needed.
The Brennan Center describes Shelby County as the decision that “swept away a key provision” of the Voting Rights Act.
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 2021
After Shelby County, Section 2 became more important because it still applied nationwide. Section 2 allows challenges to voting practices that deny minority voters equal opportunity.
In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Court upheld two Arizona voting rules and announced “guideposts” for evaluating Section 2 vote-denial claims. The practical effect was to make some Section 2 challenges harder. Harvard Law Review summarized the decision as one in which the Court upheld the Arizona restrictions and articulated five guideposts for future Section 2 cases.
Supporters of the decision argued that states need reasonable authority to regulate elections and prevent fraud or administrative disorder. Critics argued that the Court narrowed the law beyond what Congress intended and made it harder to challenge rules that disproportionately burden minority voters.
Louisiana v. Callais, 2026
In Louisiana v. Callais, decided in 2026, the Court further narrowed the relationship between Section 2 and redistricting. The Court said Section 2 was designed to enforce the Constitution, not collide with it, and held that lower courts had sometimes applied Section 2 in ways that pushed states toward unconstitutional race-based districting.
The practical significance is that the Court made it harder to use the Voting Rights Act to require districts that give minority voters a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, especially when race is central to the districting remedy. Civil-rights groups and voting-rights advocates argue that this sharply weakens minority representation protections; supporters of the ruling argue that it prevents unconstitutional racial sorting in redistricting.
Why “Eviscerate” Is a Common Description
The word “eviscerate” is strong, but many voting-rights advocates use it because the Court removed or narrowed the Act’s most powerful tools.
Before Shelby County, covered jurisdictions had to prove that voting changes were not discriminatory before implementing them. After Shelby County, those changes could usually take effect unless someone had the money, time, evidence, and legal capacity to sue afterward.
That is a major shift. Preclearance was preventive. Litigation is reactive.
Then Brnovich narrowed some Section 2 claims. Then Callais further limited Section 2 in redistricting. So the pattern is not just one case. It is a sequence: the preventive system was disabled, and the remaining litigation tools were narrowed.
From the Court majority’s perspective, these decisions protect constitutional federalism, state election authority, and equal-protection limits on the use of race. From the dissenters’ and critics’ perspective, the Court has weakened Congress’s chosen remedy for persistent racial discrimination in voting.
What Can Be Done to Restore It?
There are several possible paths, each with different legal and political obstacles.
1. Congress can pass a new coverage formula
The most direct restoration would be for Congress to create a new Section 4 coverage formula based on current evidence. Shelby County did not say preclearance was always unconstitutional. It said the old formula was outdated. A new formula could identify jurisdictions with recent voting-rights violations and require them to obtain federal approval before changing voting laws.
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is the major proposal along these lines. The Brennan Center describes it as legislation that would modernize and revitalize the Voting Rights Act, restore preclearance in jurisdictions discriminating on the basis of race, and create preclearance for certain practices often associated with discrimination.
2. Congress can strengthen Section 2
Congress can clarify the legal standard for Section 2 claims. This could include restoring a stronger “results test,” making clear that plaintiffs do not always need to prove discriminatory intent, and directing courts to consider the full social and historical context of unequal voting opportunity.
This matters because intentional discrimination is often difficult to prove. Modern voting discrimination can be designed to look facially neutral while still producing racially unequal results.
3. Congress can set national voting-access standards
Another route is national standards for federal elections: automatic voter registration, same-day registration, early voting, vote-by-mail access, fair ballot counting rules, protections against wrongful purges, and transparent redistricting requirements.
This approach does not rely only on proving racial discrimination. It raises the floor for everyone. The advantage is simplicity and broad coverage. The challenge is that election administration has traditionally been heavily state-based, though Congress has constitutional power to regulate federal elections.
4. States can pass their own voting-rights acts
States can also adopt state-level voting-rights acts. These can provide protections beyond federal law, including protections against vote dilution, language-access barriers, discriminatory local election systems, and unfair redistricting. State courts can also interpret state constitutions to provide broader voting protections than the federal Constitution currently provides.
5. Courts can still enforce what remains
Even after Shelby County, Brnovich, and Callais, parts of the Voting Rights Act remain. Section 2 still exists, though narrowed. Other federal constitutional claims remain. The Justice Department and private plaintiffs can still challenge discriminatory voting rules, intimidation, and certain forms of vote dilution. But the burden is heavier than it was when preclearance operated.
6. A constitutional amendment could create a stronger right to vote
The U.S. Constitution protects voting rights in several places, but it does not contain a simple, affirmative, universal right-to-vote clause. A constitutional amendment could explicitly guarantee the right to vote and give Congress broad authority to protect it. That would be a difficult political path, but it would address the recurring problem of courts narrowing statutory protections.
Conclusion
The Voting Rights Act was needed because constitutional promises had been betrayed for generations. The Fifteenth Amendment said race could not be used to deny the vote, but states and localities found ways to do exactly that. The Voting Rights Act worked because it did not rely on promises alone. It created enforcement power.
Its great achievement was not merely that more people registered to vote. It changed the political structure of the country. It allowed millions of citizens who had been excluded from democracy to participate in it.
The Supreme Court weakened the Act because a majority concluded that some of its strongest tools were no longer justified, or that they conflicted with constitutional principles involving federalism, equal state sovereignty, and equal protection. Critics argue that the Court ignored Congress’s evidence and underestimated the persistence and adaptability of voting discrimination.
The central question now is whether the country still believes voting rights require strong national protection. If it does, Congress has tools available: a modern preclearance formula, a restored Section 2 standard, national voting-access protections, and stronger enforcement. States can also act. Courts can still enforce remaining protections, though under narrower rules.
The history of the Voting Rights Act teaches a clear lesson: democracy does not protect itself automatically. Rights written on paper require institutions strong enough to make them real.
References
- U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. “History of Federal Voting Rights Laws.”
Cited above: - National Archives. “Voting Rights Act (1965).”
Cited above: - U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. “Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act.”
Cited above: - Supreme Court of the United States / Justia. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013).
Cited above: - Oyez. “Shelby County v. Holder.”
Cited above: - Brennan Center for Justice. “Shelby County v. Holder.”
Cited above: - Supreme Court of the United States. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U.S. ___ (2021).
Cited above: - Harvard Law Review. “Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee.”
Cited above: - Supreme Court of the United States. Louisiana v. Callais, decided April 29, 2026.
Cited above: - National Constitution Center. “The Supreme Court’s Callais decision sets new framework for racial gerrymandering.”
Cited above: - Brennan Center for Justice. “The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.”
Cited above: - Brennan Center for Justice. “Preclearance Under the Voting Rights Act.”
Cited above:
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