The Supreme Court Shredded America’s ‘Most Powerful’ Law
The Voting Rights Act turns 61 on Thursday, but a recent ruling by the Supreme Court has left the landmark legislation gutted. On this anniversary, we examine the legacy and future of the VRA.
Thursday marks the 61st anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark law that prohibited racial discrimination in voting. The Act safeguarded the right to vote for Black Americans who had long been subjected to racist literacy tests, poll taxes, harassment, and intimidation for simply trying to register and cast their ballots.
The historic legislation was passed five months after the events of “Bloody Sunday,” when civil rights marchers were brutally attacked by police while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their way to Montgomery, Alabama, to demand voting rights for Black Americans.
More than six decades later, the future of the law is in jeopardy, thanks to a far-right Supreme Court that further gutted key provisions of the Voting Rights Act earlier this year.
Now, more than a dozen House districts led by Black Democrats are at risk of being eliminated, and Republican efforts to promote voter suppression, like the SAVE America Act, threaten to further dismantle voting rights for Black and brown voters across the country.