House Democrats introduced long-awaited updated legislation on Tuesday to reauthorize sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that have been gutted in recent years by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority.
The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4), named for the late congressman and civil rights champion, is meant to undo Supreme Court rulings that gave states and jurisdictions more leeway to put restrictions on voting access that are now being enacted at an alarming rate.
The latest version of the legislation creates a new formula for identifying discriminatory election practices in states and jurisdictions previously covered by the Voting Rights Act preclearance provision, which allowed the Department of Justice to review local laws for discrimination prior to their enactment. The bill also reinstates provisions in the Voting Rights Act, recently gutted in the court’s Brnovich v. DNC decision, that enable judicial review after an election law is enacted.
Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), the bill’s chief sponsor, unveiled the new bill in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, the site of the 1965 Bloody Sunday civil rights march where Alabama troopers beat protesters including Lewis, then the leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, fracturing his skull. The march and the attack on demonstrators led President Lyndon Johnson to call on Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, which made Jim Crow election laws illegal in the former Confederacy and other jurisdictions with a history of discrimination.
Source: Democrats Introduce John Lewis Voting Law To Restore The Voting Rights Act
