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Pop quiz— How do we know that the Voting Rights Act (VRA) matters so much for our democracy? Because Republicans and partisan judges keep doing everything possible to attack it. Since the overwhelmingly bipartisan reauthorization of the VRA by Congress in the early 2000s, Republican policymakers and conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court have consistently sought to chip away at its protections. A series of cases and decisions have put the VRA to the test — often with disastrous consequences for voting rights and fair representation. We’ll quickly explain this recent history of attacks by the far right in a moment — but first, can you make a donation to the NDRC to make sure we can keep fighting gerrymandering and supporting fair representation in states across the country?
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the most important challenges to the VRA, and how they have shaped the current voting landscape across the U.S. In 2013, the court’s disastrous Shelby County decision struck down a key VRA provision that had been in place since 1965, which mandated jurisdictions with a record of voter discrimination get federal approval before changing their election laws or redistricting plans. After the ruling, states immediately began attempting to restrict access to the ballot. The Texas Attorney General announced on the day of the decision that his state would enact “the most restrictive voter ID law in the nation,” and in the very next redistricting cycle, Republicans deliberately manipulated maps to dilute Black voting power. In 2021, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brnovich v. DNC upheld two racially discriminatory voting rules in Arizona — weakening the VRA and giving states the green light to push through more discriminatory voting practices. This decision was yet another step in the coordinated assault on our democracy being carried out in the name of “election security” — based on the decades-long lie of widespread election fraud. The true impact, however, is the systematic disenfranchisement of countless American citizens, especially people of color. In 2022, the court issued a historic gerrymandering decision — and this time, they were on the right side of democracy and fair representation. In Allen v. Milligan, the court rejected Alabama Republicans’ brazen attempt to crack Black voters across multiple districts. The manipulated map had resulted in just one of the state’s seven congressional seats truly offering Black voters the chance to elect a candidate of their choice — in a state where 27% of the population is Black. But the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that this violated the VRA and reaffirmed a longstanding legal test for evaluating claims of discrimination in electoral maps. Rather than comply, Alabama created a new map that was still discriminatory. The fair maps movement supported Alabama voters who challenged the latest gerrymander in court, where it was rejected once again — ultimately leading to a new map that complies with the VRA and gave Black voters the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice in two congressional districts for the 2024 election. Still, the state of Alabama continued to fight enforcement of the VRA, leading to a key court decision in May confirming that its congressional map must have two Black opportunity districts for the remainder of the decade. And in 2025 — that’s this year — Republicans have continued to use the courts to attempt to erase Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as part of a larger strategy to gerrymander the congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterms. From Alabama to Georgia to Louisiana, ongoing lawsuits could determine whether or not the national congressional map remains the fairest map we have seen in decades or awards Republicans an unfair advantage by dismantling Black opportunity districts. Look, it’s clear as day: Republicans will never stop trying to undermine the VRA and gerrymander their way into power. So we must never stop working to fight back against their attacks. As Attorney General Eric Holder has said: “To this day, the Voting Rights Act remains the most effective law in the country to protect the right to vote… Yet, anti-democratic forces are just as determined today as they were during the Jim Crow era to dismantle these protections in order to suppress the votes of American citizens.” Thanks for being in this fight with us, Team NDRC
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