The ACLU submitted this report, “The Case for Restoring and Updating the Voting Rights Act: A Report of the American Civil Liberties Union 2021,” to the House Judiciary Committee in support of the committee’s record for the Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4). The ACLU previously submitted reports in and in support of reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act. This report highlights how voting practices denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, ethnicity, and language minority status persist. Although the forms it takes have changed, voter suppression remains flagrant and widespread. The report urges Congress to fulfill its constitutional mandate under the Reconstruction Amendments to enact strong federal protections for the right to vote through passage of the Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4).
The report is divided into four parts. First, we provide a brief overview of the conditions leading to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and review the Act’s provisions, as well as changes made in subsequent reauthorizations to update its protections. Second, we provide an analysis of current law governing Congress’s power to enact remedial legislation to address voting discrimination after the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which effectively halted the Act’s preclearance remedy. Next, we provide information on current conditions of voting discrimination since the last reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006 based on the ACLU’s litigation experience and other advocacy work and identify weaknesses in current enforcement mechanisms. Finally, we review key provisions of the Voting Rights Advancement Act we believe are minimally necessary to provide protection against voting discrimination. The first appendix to this report includes summaries of the voting rights cases the ACLU participated in from 2006 to the submission of the report in July 2021. The second appendix is the written testimony of Sophia Lin Lakin, Deputy Director of the Voting Rights Project, submitted for a June 29, 2021 congressional hearing on the state of voting rights.