Protections of the Voting Rights Act are under threat

WASHINGTON — Wednesday is the 60th anniversary of the day President Lyndon Johnson made his way to the U.S. Capitol and, with Martin Luther King Jr. standing behind him, signed the Voting Rights Act into law. The act protected the right to vote and ensured the government would fight efforts to suppress it, especially those aimed at Black voters. For many Americans, it was the day U.S. democracy fully began. That was then. The law has been slowly eroding for more than a decade, starting with the 2013 Supreme Court decision ending the requirement that all or parts of 15 states with a history of discrimination in voting get federal approval before changing the way they hold elections. Within hours of the ruling, some states that had been under the preclearance provision began announcing plans for stricter voting laws. Those changes have continued, especially since the 2020 presidential election and President Donald Trump's false claims that widespread fraud cost him reelection. The Supreme Court upheld a key part of the Voting Rights Act in 2023, but in its upcoming term it's scheduled to hear a case that could roll back that decision and another that would effectively neuter the law. Voting rights experts say those cases will largely determine whether a landmark law passed during a turbulent era decades ago will have future anniversaries to mark. "We're at a critical juncture right now," said Demetria McCain, director of policy at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "And, let's be clear, our democracy is only about to turn 60 when the Voting Rights Act anniversary gets here. I say that because there are so many attacks on voting rights, particularly as it relates to Black communities and communities of color." Native Americans celebrate a win that could be temporary The reservation of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Canadian border, a region of forests, small lakes and vast prairie land. Its main highway is a mix of small houses, mobile homes and businesses. A gleaming casino and hotel stand out, not far from grazing bison. In 2024, the tribe and another in North Dakota, the Spirit Lake Tribe, formed a joint political district for the first time. They had filed a lawsuit arguing that the way lines were drawn for state legislative seats denied them the right to elect candidates of their choice. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Peter Welte agreed and put a new map in place. State Rep. Collette Brown ran for the legislature because she wanted to see more Native American representation, and she won under the new map. "It felt surreal. I felt accomplished, I felt recognized," said Brown, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and the Spirit Lake Tribe's Gaming Commission executive director. "I felt, OK, it's time for us to really start making change and really start educating from within so that we're not silenced." Brown, a Democrat, co-sponsored several bills on Native American issues that became law, including aid for repatriation of remains and artifacts and alerts for missing Indigenous people. This year's anniversary of the Voting Rights Act "forces you to look at how far we've come," from Native Americans to women, said Jamie Azure, chairman of the Turtle Mountain tribe. Now the future of their district is in the hands of the Supreme Court. Will individuals be allowed to file voting rights challenges? The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers North Dakota and six other states, overturned Welte's decision 2-1, saying the tribes and entities such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU do not have a right to sue over potential violations of voters' constitutional rights. That ruling expanded on an earlier 8th Circuit opinion out of Arkansas that rejected a different challenge on the same grounds. Late last month, a 3rd Circuit court panel ruled in a separate case out of Arkansas that only the U.S. attorney general can file such cases — not private individuals or groups. Those decisions upended decades of precedent. The Supreme Court has stayed the ruling for the tribes while it decides whether it will take the North Dakota case. The University of Michigan Law School Voting Rights Initiative found that since 1982 nearly 87% of claims under that part of the Voting Rights Act, known as Section 2, were from private individuals and organizations. Leaving individuals without the ability to file challenges is especially troublesome now because the Justice Department under Trump, a Republican, seems focused on other priorities, said Sophia Lin Lakin, who heads the ACLU's Voting Rights Project. The government's voting rights unit has been dismantled and given new priorities that, she said, have turned enforcement "against the very people it was created to protect." The Justice Department declined to answer questions about its voting rights priorities, cases it is pursuing or whether it would be involved in the voting rights cases coming before the nation's highest court. Supreme Court weighs another case on race and congressional districts Two years ago, voting rights activists celebrated when the Supreme Court preserved Section 2 in a case out of Alabama that required the state to draw an addition congressional district to benefit Black voters. Now it's poised to rehear a similar case out of Louisiana that could modify or undo that decision. The court heard the case in March but did not make a decision during the term. In an order on Friday, the court asked the lawyers to supply briefs explaining "whether the State's intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution." Robert Weiner, the director of voting rights for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said while it is a "matter of concern" that the court is asking the question, the fact the nine justices did not reach a decision during the last term suggests there weren't five votes already. "They wouldn't need re-argument if the sides had already been chosen," he said. Trump's Justice Department shifts focus on voting issues At a time when the remaining protections of the Voting Rights Act are under threat, the Justice Department has shifted its election-related priorities. Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, it has dropped or withdrawn from several election- and voting-related cases. The department instead has focused on concerns of voter fraud raised by conservative activists following years of false claims surrounding elections. The department also has sent requests for voter registration information as well as data on election fraud and warnings of election violations to at least 19 states. In addition to the shift in focus at the Justice Department, federal legislation to protect voting rights has gone nowhere. Democrats have reintroduced the John Lewis voting rights bill, but it's legislation they failed to pass in 2022 when they held both houses of Congress and the White House and needed some Republican support in the Senate. Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order seeking to overhaul voting in the states, which includes a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement on the federal voting form, though much of it has been blocked in the courts. The GOP-controlled House passed a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. And gerrymandering state legislative and congressional districts remains prevalent. The slow chipping away at the 60-year-old law has created a nation with an unequal distribution of voting rights, said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights center at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Some states have been active in expanding access to voting while others have been focused on restricting the vote. "The last five to 10 years," he said, "the experiences of voters increasingly depend on where they live."