The Voting Rights Act Explained

What Is the Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a federal law that guarantees the right to vote regardless of race and hands the federal government the tools to enforce it. President Johnson signed it on August 6, 1965, five months after state troopers beat marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. It suspended literacy tests and similar screening devices, sent federal registrars into counties that turned Black applicants away, and directed the Justice Department to sue over poll taxes.

Mississippi had the lowest Black registration rate in the country in 1964, and it moved fastest once the law took hold.

Black voter registration in Mississippi

Period	Value
1964, before the VRA	6.7%
1967, after the VRA	59.8%
Change	+53 points in 3 years

“The vote is precious. It is almost sacred.”

Rep. John Lewis

How Federal Oversight Worked

The Fifteenth Amendment already banned race discrimination in voting when Congress wrote the Voting Rights Act. Ratified in 1870, it had been law for 95 years while Mississippi still registered 6.7% of its Black adults, because a right on paper had no one enforcing it. What 1965 added was machinery, built mainly on the Fifteenth Amendment and partly on the Fourteenth, since equal protection also covers how a state runs its elections.

Six steps turned a paper right into working federal supervision of Southern elections.

How a Covered Jurisdiction Was Caught, Watched, and Released

1. 1 The trigger Section 4(b) decides who is covered A state or county was covered if it used a "test or device" on November 1, 1964 and fewer than half its voting-age residents were registered or voted that November. That formula caught Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia whole, plus counties elsewhere. Congress re-triggered it on 1968 and 1972 data, which added Texas and Arizona and brought the total to nine fully covered states.
2. 2 Immediate Tests and devices are banned outright Literacy tests, "understanding" questions, good-character requirements, and voucher rules from existing voters. Suspended in covered places in 1965, banned nationwide in 1970, made permanent in 1975.
3. 3 1965 onward Federal examiners register people the local registrar turned away Examiners applied the state's lawful standards themselves and handed local officials a list of qualified voters. About 250,000 Black voters registered by the end of 1965, roughly a third of them through examiners.
4. 4 Election days Federal observers watch the polls A separate corps that monitored voting and counting in certified jurisdictions and reported whether eligible voters were able to cast ballots that counted.
5. 5 Before any change Section 5 freezes every future change until Washington approves it A covered jurisdiction could not move a polling place, redraw a line, or add an ID rule without federal preclearance. This is the engine, and it is why the Act worked where litigation had failed for a century.
6. 6 Any time Bailout lets a clean jurisdiction leave A covered place could sue for a declaratory judgment in the D.C. district court and get released by proving a clean record. Dozens did, from Wake County in 1967 through a wave of Virginia and other jurisdictions before 2013.

Sources: U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division; 52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.

The bailout step carries more weight than its placement suggests. When the Supreme Court struck the coverage formula in 2013, the majority reasoned that the formula rested on decades-old data. Bailout was the Act’s own answer to that problem, and it was working, because jurisdictions that cleaned up their record could and did get themselves released one court judgment at a time.

The Act also grew beyond Black voters. Amendments in 1975 extended it to any language minority group, a category defined to include American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, and people of Spanish heritage. A group qualifies on census data rather than on anyone’s judgment about who deserves help. Section 203 still requires translated ballots and election materials wherever a jurisdiction has more than 10,000 or more than 5% of voting-age citizens from a covered group who are limited-English proficient.

Two Tools That Protected Voters

The Voting Rights Act carried two enforcement tools, and the difference between them explains what the Court took and what it left.

One tool stopped a discriminatory rule before it took effect. The other lets voters sue after it already has.

Section 5, preclearance. Nine states and parts of six more had to get federal approval before changing any voting rule, from a new ID requirement to a moved polling place to a redistricting map. Between 1965 and 2013 the Justice Department blocked or deterred more than 1,000 discriminatory changes that way.

Section 2, the lawsuit. This section applies in all 50 states but only after the fact. Voters sue once the harm has happened, through litigation that runs years and costs millions, so the burden sits on the people harmed rather than on the state.

Section 2 covers two different injuries, and the second one is where most of the litigation lives. Blocking someone from registering is vote denial. Vote dilution happens after the ballot is cast, when the vote gets counted and then engineered into irrelevance.

The classic dilution device was the at-large election. A city with a 40% Black population elects every council seat citywide, so the same majority wins every seat and the minority elects nobody. Racial gerrymandering does the same work with district lines, either packing voters into one district or cracking them across several, which is why the Callais ruling on redistricting reached so far.

The Attorney General ran the enforcement side of all of it, certifying which jurisdictions got federal examiners, deciding which submitted changes to object to under Section 5, and bringing the government’s own suits. Nicholas Katzenbach, who held the office in 1965, helped draft the bill and defended it before a Senate Judiciary Committee whose chairman opposed it and reported it out anyway.

Three Supreme Court Rulings in 13 Years

Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and renewed it 98-0 in 2006. The Supreme Court then struck the coverage formula behind preclearance in 2013, tightened the standard for Section 2 lawsuits in 2021, and rewrote the test for proving discrimination in 2026.

Every ruling since 2013 has moved in the same direction.

1. 1965 Voting Rights Act signed Literacy tests suspended, federal registrars sent into the South
2. 2006 Senate renews the Act 98-0 A 25-year extension, with every voting senator in favor
3. 2013 Shelby County ends preclearance Coverage formula struck 5-4, advance federal review stops (source)
4. 2021 Brnovich narrows Section 2 Five new guideposts make discrimination suits harder to win, 6-3
5. 2026 Callais requires proof of intent Vote dilution claims must show a state meant to discriminate, 6-3 (source)

: 1965 — Voting Rights Act signed (Literacy tests suspended, federal registrars sent into the South). 2006 — Senate renews the Act 98-0 (A 25-year extension, with every voting senator in favor). 2013 — Shelby County ends preclearance (Coverage formula struck 5-4, advance federal review stops). 2021 — Brnovich narrows Section 2 (Five new guideposts make discrimination suits harder to win, 6-3). 2026 — Callais requires proof of intent (Vote dilution claims must show a state meant to discriminate, 6-3).

Shelby County killed preclearance in 2013

On June 25, 2013, the Court struck down Section 4(b), the formula that decided which places needed federal approval, by a vote of 5-4. Section 5 survived on paper with no jurisdiction left to apply it to. Texas announced its strict voter ID law the same day the decision came down.

North Carolina passed one of the most restrictive voting laws in the country within two months. A federal appeals court later found that it targeted Black voters “with almost surgical precision.”

“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 in Shelby County v. Holder, 2013

Brnovich weakened Section 2 in 2021

The Court ruled 6-3 in 2021 that Section 2 claims should be measured against five new guideposts, one of which asks whether a state offers more voting opportunity than most states did in 1982. That anchors the standard to a year when access was far more limited, so a state can make voting harder than it is today and still win, as long as it stays easier than 1982. Arizona’s refusal to count ballots cast in the wrong precinct, which fell hardest on Native American, Hispanic, and Black voters, survived under that test.

Callais rewrote the standard in 2026

On April 29, 2026, the Court ruled 6-3, in an opinion by Justice Alito, that the second majority-Black congressional district Louisiana drew to comply with the Voting Rights Act was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Louisiana’s first majority-Black district was not at issue. Because the Act did not require the second district, the Court held, the state had no compelling reason to use race in drawing it.

The Court kept the 1986 Gingles framework, the three-part test that governs vote dilution claims, and tightened every part of it. A challenger must now bring evidence supporting a strong inference that a state meant to leave minority voters with less opportunity to elect their candidates, a purpose legislators almost never put on the record. The ruling reached redistricting rather than every kind of Section 2 case, but redistricting is where most Section 2 litigation has always happened, and it is why the effect on gerrymandering was immediate.

States moved within a week. Florida’s legislature approved a map shifting four Democratic-held seats on April 29, and Governor Ron DeSantis signed it on May 4. Tennessee passed a map on May 7 that split Memphis into three Republican districts, ending the state’s only majority-Black congressional seat.

“Section 2 has been rendered all but a dead letter.”

Justice Elena Kagan, dissent in Louisiana v. Callais, 2026

What Happened After Preclearance Died

Nine states and parts of six more needed federal approval before changing any voting rule until June 25, 2013. Every red and orange state on the map lost that requirement the day Shelby County came down.

Federal supervision covered nearly all of the Deep South, and all of it ended on a single day.

Fully covered (lost preclearance)

Partially covered (specific counties)

Not covered by Section 5

Source: DOJ Civil Rights Division, Brennan Center for Justice

Section 5 Preclearance Coverage Before Shelby County (2013)

State	Preclearance	After Shelby
Alabama	Fully covered statewide	White-Black turnout gap reached 13 points in 2024, widening since Shelby County
Alaska	Fully covered statewide	Lost federal oversight. No longer required to get approval before changing voting rules.
Arizona	Fully covered statewide	Lost federal oversight. No longer required to get approval before changing voting rules.
Arkansas	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
California	Specific counties covered	Specific counties covered, not statewide
Colorado	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Connecticut	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Delaware	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
District of Columbia	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Florida	Specific counties covered	Specific counties covered, not statewide
Georgia	Fully covered statewide	SB 202 cut drop boxes 77% in counties with the most Black, Asian, and Latino residents
Hawaii	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Idaho	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Illinois	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Indiana	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Iowa	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Kansas	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Kentucky	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Louisiana	Fully covered statewide	Majority-Black congressional district erased in 2026 redistricting
Maine	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Maryland	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Massachusetts	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Michigan	Specific counties covered	Specific townships covered, not statewide
Minnesota	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Mississippi	Fully covered statewide	Black voter registration went from 6.7% to 59.8% under the VRA
Missouri	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Montana	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Nebraska	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Nevada	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
New Hampshire	Specific counties covered	Specific towns covered, not statewide
New Jersey	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
New Mexico	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
New York	Specific counties covered	Specific counties covered, not statewide
North Carolina	Specific counties covered	Passed one of the most restrictive voting laws within 2 months of Shelby. Court found it targeted Black voters "with almost surgical precision."
North Dakota	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Ohio	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Oklahoma	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Oregon	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Pennsylvania	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Rhode Island	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
South Carolina	Fully covered statewide	Lost federal oversight. No longer required to get approval before changing voting rules.
South Dakota	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Tennessee	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Texas	Fully covered statewide	1.1 million voters purged from rolls since 2021 under SB 1. 463,000 placed on suspense list.
Utah	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Vermont	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Virginia	Fully covered statewide	Lost federal oversight. No longer required to get approval before changing voting rules.
Washington	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
West Virginia	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Wisconsin	Not covered	No change in federal oversight
Wyoming	Not covered	No change in federal oversight

Polls closed, restrictions passed, and the racial turnout gap widened.

1,688 polling places closed in formerly supervised states

Between 2012 and 2018, 1,688 polling places closed across 13 states that had been fully or partly covered by preclearance. 1,173 of those closures came between the 2014 and 2018 midterms, after advance federal review had already ended.

Texas closed the most at 750, followed by Arizona at 320 and Georgia at 214. Seven Georgia counties were left with one polling site each, covering hundreds of square miles of rural ground, so a voter without a car in those counties has to find a ride or skip the election.

44 restrictive voting laws in the 2025-2026 cycle

States enacted 79 restrictive election laws between 2021 and 2024, then nearly matched that total in half the time. The Brennan Center counts 44 restrictive laws enacted across 19 states since January 2025, the most in any two-year federal election cycle it has tracked. Stricter ID rules, shorter mail deadlines, fewer drop boxes, and new demands for citizenship documents make up most of them.

Through May 1, 2026, nine states had enacted 12 restrictive laws and 41 legislatures had considered 302 bills with restrictive provisions. Preclearance would have frozen many of these in the covered states until the Justice Department signed off, which is why the tally and the 2013 ruling belong in the same sentence.

2025 tied 2021 for the most restrictive voting laws enacted in a single year, and 2021 followed a contested presidential election while 2025 followed an uncontested one.

2025 matched the 2021 record for restrictive voting laws

Category	Value
2021 (after the contested 2020 election)	32
2022	11
2023	17
2024	19
2025 (ties the 2021 record)	32
2026 (through May 1)	12

Source: Brennan Center State Voting Laws Roundups, through May 1, 2026.

Who these laws target

The restrictions do not land evenly. Each one names a document or a deadline, and each choice of document or deadline sorts voters by age, income, or distance from a county office.

Every restriction in the table is a rule about paperwork, and paperwork is the barrier that follows income.

Five states will demand citizenship papers from every person who registers or updates a registration for the 2026 midterms. Arizona already had such a rule, and New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming added theirs since 2025. Louisiana has a sixth on the books that it has not put into effect.

The racial turnout gap is widening

Turnout tracks the barriers. The groups facing the most ID, distance, and language obstacles turned out at the lowest rates in 2024, measured the same way for every group as a share of citizens old enough to vote.

White turnout in 2024 ran about 11 points above Black turnout and 20 points above Latino turnout.

Alabama shows the trend at its sharpest. The white-Black turnout gap there reached 13 points in 2024, up from 9 points in 2022 and the widest since at least 2008. Black turnout in Alabama fell 6 points between 2020 and 2024 while white turnout fell 1.

Native turnout is counted by place rather than by race, so it sits outside the table above. Turnout on federally recognized tribal lands ran 11 points below the rest of the same states across federal elections from 2012 to 2022, and 15 points below in presidential years. Members of the Fort Peck tribes in Montana drive 30 to 60 miles each way to vote, after county officials refused them a satellite election office closer to the reservation.

Preclearance put the burden of proof on the state. Losing it moved that burden onto voters.

What Communities Lose Without Representation

Voting restrictions reach past election night. Who holds a legislative seat decides which schools get funded, which states expand health coverage, and which neighborhoods wait.

A district’s political power shows up in its school budget before it shows up anywhere else.

The Education Trust found that school districts serving the highest concentrations of students of color receive 16% less state and local funding than districts serving the fewest. That gap is nearly twice as large as the poverty-based funding gap. In 14 states that serve 40% of all Black, Latino, and Native students, the disparity is worst.

Closing that gap changes outcomes, which is what makes the gap worth fighting over. The Learning Policy Institute found that a 10% increase in per-pupil spending sustained over 12 years for low-income students raises high school graduation rates by 7% and adult wages by 10%.

Health coverage follows the same pattern. Gerrymandered state legislatures block Medicaid expansion even where most constituents support it, and communities of color are underrepresented in the bodies making that call. Lower coverage rates, higher mortality, more medical debt, and more evictions all cluster in the places with the least political power.

Where the Voting Rights Act Stands Today

Section 5 is dead and Section 2 is close to it. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would build a new preclearance formula out of recent findings of discrimination rather than 1960s data, covering any state with 15 voting rights violations in the past 25 years.

Neither chamber has moved it. Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama, whose district includes Selma, introduced the House version on March 5, 2025, and Senators Dick Durbin and Raphael Warnock introduced the Senate companion on July 29, 2025. Both sit in committee with no hearing scheduled. The last time any version reached a Senate floor vote, in January 2022, cloture failed 49 to 51.

Alabama is the clearest live test of what Section 2 still does. A three-judge federal court found that the legislature intentionally discriminated against Black voters when it drew its 2023 map, which left one district where they could elect their candidate of choice. The court ordered a replacement drawn by a neutral special master. On June 2, 2026, the Supreme Court let Alabama use the 2023 map anyway for this year’s elections, in an unsigned 6-3 order. A finding of intentional discrimination, the exact showing Callais now demands, did not produce a remedy in time for the election.

Whether private citizens can sue under Section 2 at all is unsettled in seven states. The Eighth Circuit held in 2023 that voters cannot sue under Section 2 directly, then held in 2025 that they cannot get there through Section 1983 either. That would have left enforcement in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota to the Justice Department alone.

That ruling no longer stands. On May 18, 2026, the Supreme Court vacated it in Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe and sent the case back to the Eighth Circuit to reconsider under Callais. Private plaintiffs have brought most Section 2 cases in the Act’s history, so the answer that court gives on remand decides whether the statute has anyone to enforce it in those seven states.

Three pieces of the Act are still standing, and they are worth knowing by name.

Section 3(c), the bail-in. A federal court that finds a jurisdiction intentionally discriminated can place that jurisdiction under preclearance by court order. It is preclearance one defendant at a time, it survived Shelby County untouched, and it is the only route by which any American jurisdiction faces federal review of voting changes today.

Section 203, language access. Ballots and election materials must be translated wherever a jurisdiction has more than 10,000 or more than 5% of voting-age citizens from a covered language minority group who are limited-English proficient. No Supreme Court decision has touched it.

State Voting Rights Acts. Eleven states have passed their own, starting with California in 2002 and running through Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey in 2026, and several build in the preclearance and effects-based standards the federal Act lost. Michigan’s package cleared the state Senate on June 16, 2026 and awaits the House. Democracy Docket reported that Callais may reach these state laws too, because the constitutional reasoning about drawing districts with race in mind does not stop at the federal statute.

State courts are the other venue that remains. 30 states have “free and equal elections” clauses in their constitutions, which give voters a basis for challenge that does not depend on the federal Act. State litigation still takes years, still costs money, and still turns on which judges hear the case.

The Honest Disagreement

Serious lawyers disagree about what the Voting Rights Act may still require, and the argument is about constitutional power rather than about whether discrimination happened. We lay out both cases.

The case for narrowing Section 2 runs through the Fifteenth Amendment and was made by the Callais majority and by Louisiana’s attorneys. That amendment bars the intentional denial of the vote on account of race, so a statute enforcing it, on this reading, can reach only intentional discrimination. Drawing a district to hit a racial target is itself the constitutional problem in that view, and Justice Kavanaugh has written separately that race-conscious remedies should have an end point rather than run indefinitely.

The case against comes from the three dissenting justices and from litigators at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Campaign Legal Center. Congress amended Section 2 in 1982 for the specific purpose of removing an intent requirement the Court had imposed two years earlier in City of Mobile v. Bolden, because legislators almost never record a discriminatory purpose. A results test is what made the statute enforceable at all, on this account, and reinstating intent by judicial construction reverses a choice Congress made on the record.

Neither side disputes the underlying history. Mississippi registered 6.7% of its Black adults in 1964, the Act moved that number to 59.8% by 1967, and the Senate renewed it 98-0 in 2006. The fight is over what remedy the Constitution still permits six decades later, and we do not declare a winner on that question.

What Still Protects Voters

The Voting Rights Act was the strongest voting rights law this country has had, and it was never the only one. Its weakening does not mean enforcement has stopped.

• State constitutions carry their own guarantees. 30 states have “free and equal elections” clauses, and courts in Alaska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have struck restrictive laws under them without touching the federal Act.
• The 14th and 15th Amendments still apply. Federal courts still hear claims that a state intentionally discriminated in voting. What Callais took away was the ability to prove a violation through effects rather than intent.
• Some states expanded access in the same period. Six states enacted 16 laws making voting easier between January and May 1, 2026, and 42 legislatures considered 558 bills with expansive provisions.
• Section 203 language access is untouched. Translated ballots are still required wherever a jurisdiction crosses the limited-English-proficiency threshold, and no Supreme Court ruling has narrowed it.

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Frequently asked questions

Is the Voting Rights Act repealed? No. The statute is still federal law and Congress has never repealed any part of it. What the Supreme Court did was strike the formula that made Section 5 usable and raise the proof a Section 2 plaintiff has to bring. The words are intact and the enforcement is not.

How is the John Lewis Act different from the Freedom to Vote Act? The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act rebuilds preclearance by writing a new coverage formula for states with recent violations. The Freedom to Vote Act sets national minimum standards for things like early voting and mail ballots in all 50 states. They solve different problems, and neither has passed.

What can a state court do that a federal court cannot? A state court can strike a voting law under its own state constitution, which in many states protects elections more strongly than the federal Constitution does. Those rulings bind only that state, and the U.S. Supreme Court generally will not review a decision resting entirely on state law.

Does Callais reach state Voting Rights Acts? Possibly. The ruling addressed the federal statute, but its reasoning about drawing districts with race in mind could apply to state laws that require the same thing. Democracy Docket reported in 2026 that the question is already being raised against Maryland’s new act.

What you can do

1. Ask your House member and both senators to co-sponsor H.R. 14 and S. 2523. Those are the House and Senate versions of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and both are stuck in committee with no hearing scheduled. Ask for a yes or no on the record, not a statement of support.

2. Check your own registration before your state’s deadline. Five states now demand citizenship documents from everyone who registers or updates a registration, and a purge or an address mismatch is easier to fix in September than in October. If anything looks wrong, call 866-OUR-VOTE at 866-687-8683.

3. Fund the groups litigating what is left of Section 2. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Campaign Legal Center, and Native American Rights Fund are carrying the cases, including the Turtle Mountain remand that decides whether private voters can sue at all in seven states.

4. Vote in your state supreme court races. With federal claims narrowed, state constitutions are where restrictive laws now get struck down, and in most states the judges who hear those cases face voters directly, in contests that draw a fraction of presidential turnout.

5. Write your representative using the letter below, and ask for a commitment to bring the John Lewis Act to a floor vote rather than a statement of concern about the ruling.