Five Years Since the U.S. Supreme Court Gutted the Voting Rights Act
“Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissent, Shelby County v. Holder
Five years have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court threw out America’s voting rights umbrella. Today is the fifth anniversary of the court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Because of this decision, states and localities with a history of discriminatory voting practices don’t need to seek approval from the U.S. Department of Justice in order to change their electoral laws. In the wake of Shelby’s ruling, a number of states passed laws designed to limit access to the polls, like implementing restrictive photo ID laws, rolling back early voting or eliminating same-day registration (Ohio rolled back early voting and eliminated “Golden Week”).
The New York Times this weekend detailed seven ways that Alabama has made it harder to vote since the Shelby ruling. For example, right after the decision came down, Alabama moved to require voters to have a photo ID — and then two years later shut down driver’s license offices in many counties with large percentages of African Americans, making it harder for voters to get the required ID card.
The attacks on voting rights have continued to accelerate over the past five years. Earlier this month, the court upheld Ohio’s aggressive voter purging policies, which have removed millions of lawfully registered voters from the rolls at the direction of our GOP secretary of state, Jon Husted.
The Voting Rights Act is now more than 50 years old, and Republican lawmakers have chipped away at its protections over the past decade. It’s time to update and renew the law, and Democrats have introduced legislation to do just that.
Our Democratic members of the U.S. House — Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur and Congressman Tim Ryan — have all signed on as co-sponsors of the Voting Rights Advancement Act, and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown is a co-sponsor of companion legislation in the Senate. Sherrod also has introduced the “SAVE VOTERS Act” to protect the constitutional rights of Americans from voter purges.
“You don’t take away people’s right to vote just because they didn’t vote for a couple elections any more than you take away people’s right to free speech just because they didn’t stand up in a corner and make a speech or speak at a rally,” Brown said.
Voting rights are on the ballot this fall in so many ways.
- We have the chance to elect a strong secretary of state in Kathleen Clyde and attorney general in Steve Dettelbach, who will protect Ohioans’ voting rights, and re-elect voting rights champion Sen. Sherrod Brown.
- We have the chance to send more Democrats to Congress, so we can pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act and Sherrod’s “SAVE VOTERS Act.”
- Finally, we must elect more Democrats to the Ohio Statehouse, so we can stop the torrent of new state laws that have made it harder for Ohioans to vote.
If the U.S. Supreme Court has taken away our voting rights umbrella, Americans must make a new one for ourselves.
