What the Voting Rights Act of 1965 Did
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.
Most of the enforcement is gone. The advance federal review that made the law work ended in 2013, and the Supreme Court narrowed what was left in April 2026.
Key facts
- Since April 2026, a map challenge under Section 2 needs evidence of intentional racial discrimination strong enough to infer (SCOTUS).
- The Senate renewed the Act 98-0 in 2006, with no senator voting no (Senate roll call).
- 1,688 polling places closed in 13 formerly supervised states between 2012 and 2018 (Leadership Conference).
- States enacted 125 restrictive voting laws from 2021 through September 1, 2026, a record 47 of them since the 2024 election (Brennan Center).
- 4 million Americans could not vote in 2024 because of a felony conviction, including 1 in 22 Black adults (Sentencing Project).
In Mississippi, Black registration rose ninefold within three years of the law.
| 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 on the House floor, two days after Shelby County, June 27, 2013 (Congressional Record)
If you are turned away, challenged, or told your registration is invalid, call or text 866-OUR-VOTE at 866-687-8683 to reach a trained volunteer with the nonpartisan Election Protection coalition, which says it works year-round. Crisis Text Line is free and 24/7 if you need someone to talk to. Text HOME to 741741.
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. Mississippi also charged a $2 poll tax to vote until April 1966. The 19th Amendment had the same gap for Black women, who won the vote on paper in 1920 and in practice only after 1965. 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 new Black voters registered by the end of 1965, a third of them through examiners.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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; National Archives; 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 called it “based on decades-old data and eradicated practices.” Bailout was the Act’s own answer to that problem. Jurisdictions with a clean record could ask a court for release, and dozens did, as the Justice Department’s bailout list shows.
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 where more than 10,000 or more than 5% of a jurisdiction’s voting-age citizens belong to one language group and have limited English, and that group’s illiteracy rate is above the national rate (52 U.S.C. 10503).
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.
Two tools, two approaches to protecting voting rights
Source: 52 U.S.C. 10301 and 10304; U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division; Shelby County v. Holder, Ginsburg dissent
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. The Justice Department objected 1,116 times between 1965 and 2004, and after 1982 more than 800 other proposed changes were altered or withdrawn before it had to, according to the congressional record Justice Ginsburg cited in Shelby County.
Section 2, the lawsuit. This section applies in all 50 states but only after the fact. Voters sue once the harm has happened. Justice Ginsburg’s Shelby County dissent cited Congress’s evidence that a scheme “might be in place for several election cycles” before it can be challenged, and that “litigation places a heavy financial burden on minority voters.” 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.
Mississippi showed how dilution works within a year of the Act. In its 1966 session, the legislature divided the Delta, which had been a single congressional district since 1882, among three districts, leaving a white voting-age majority in all five. It also let counties switch to at-large elections, and 46 towns and cities moved their council races to citywide votes, where the same white majority could win every seat.
The Supreme Court held in 1969 that those changes needed federal approval under Section 5. The Act, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in Allen v. State Board of Elections, was “aimed at the subtle, as well as the obvious.” Cracking a community across districts or packing it into one does the same work today, 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 (Justice Department).
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 challenging a map in 2026.
Every ruling since 2013 has moved in the same direction.
- Voting Rights Act signed Literacy tests suspended, federal registrars sent into the South
- Senate renews the Act 98-0 A 25-year extension, with every voting senator in favor
- Shelby County ends preclearance Coverage formula struck 5-4, advance federal review stops (source)
- Brnovich narrows Section 2 Five guideposts for vote-denial suits; two Arizona rules upheld, 6-3 (source)
- Callais raises the bar for map claims A challenge needs a strong inference of intentional discrimination, 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 guideposts for vote-denial suits; two Arizona rules upheld, 6-3). 2026: Callais raises the bar for map claims (A challenge needs a strong inference of intentional discrimination, 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’s governor signed a law on August 12, 2013 that required photo ID and cut early voting, same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting. In 2016 a federal appeals court found that its provisions targeted Black voters “with almost surgical precision.”
The majority’s reason was that conditions in the South had changed. The dissent answered with the record Congress had: more Justice Department objections from 1982 to 2004 (626) than from 1965 to 1982 (490).
“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
On July 1, 2021, the Court ruled 6-3, in an opinion by Justice Alito, that two Arizona rules did not violate Section 2: discarding ballots cast in the wrong precinct, and limits on who may collect another voter’s ballot. Rather than set a test, the majority listed five “guideposts,” among them “the degree to which a voting rule departs from what was standard practice when §2 was amended in 1982.” Justice Kagan, dissenting, called that “the oddest part of the majority’s analysis” and wrote that “the 1982 state of the world is no part of the Section 2 test” (opinion).
Callais Raised the Bar for Map Challenges 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. Section 2, the opinion held, “imposes liability only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the State intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.” That is an inference from circumstantial evidence, not a confession, but legislators rarely leave the kind of record it takes. The Court also held that complying with Section 2, read this way, can still justify drawing a district with race in mind.
Callais raised the bar at every step of a map challenge.
What a Section 2 challenge to a map requires, before and after Callais
Source: Louisiana v. Callais, No. 24-109 (April 29, 2026), syllabus and opinion
The ruling addressed redistricting rather than every kind of Section 2 case, and its effect on gerrymandering was immediate.
States moved within days. Florida’s legislature passed a new congressional map on April 29, the day of the ruling, 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.
“Today’s decision renders Section 2 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.
Section 5 Preclearance Coverage Before Shelby County (2013)
- Fully covered (lost preclearance)
- Partially covered (specific counties)
- Not covered by Section 5
Source: DOJ Civil Rights Division, Brennan Center for Justice
| 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 | Lost federal oversight. No longer required to get approval before changing voting rules. |
| 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 | Not covered | No change in federal oversight |
| 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 | Signed a voter ID and early voting law on August 12, 2013, seven weeks after Shelby. A federal appeals court found in 2016 that 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 | Specific counties covered | Shannon and Todd counties covered, not statewide |
| Tennessee | Not covered | No change in federal oversight |
| Texas | Fully covered statewide | Covered statewide under Section 5 from 1975 (DOJ determination published September 23, 1975) until Shelby County v. Holder ended coverage on June 25, 2013. |
| 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 13 formerly supervised states, 2012-2018
- 125
- restrictive voting laws enacted from 2021 through September 1, 2026
- 13 pts
- white-Black turnout gap in Alabama in 2024, a 16-year high
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 with major cuts were left with one polling site each to serve hundreds of square miles. Closures are one of six barriers compared in the evidence on voter suppression tactics.
The turnout record points the same way. A Brennan Center study found that after 2013 the racial turnout gap “grew almost twice as quickly in formerly covered jurisdictions as in other parts of the country with similar demographic and socioeconomic profiles.”
47 Restrictive Voting Laws Since the 2024 Election
The Brennan Center counts 47 restrictive laws enacted across 22 states since the 2024 election, the most in any two-year federal election cycle it has tracked. By its count, 21 of them set voter ID or proof-of-citizenship requirements.
Between January 1 and September 1, 2026, at least 11 states enacted 14 restrictive laws, and lawmakers in at least 41 states considered no fewer than 310 restrictive bills. Preclearance would have required federal approval for any of these changes in the formerly covered places before they took effect.
2025 tied 2021 for the most restrictive voting laws enacted in a single year. The Brennan Center notes that 2025 came “despite the fact that the 2024 presidential election results were unchallenged.”
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 32 |
| 2022 | 11 |
| 2023 | 17 |
| 2024 | 19 |
| 2025 (ties the 2021 record) | 32 |
| 2026 (through September 1) | 14 |
Source: Brennan Center State Voting Laws Roundups, through September 1, 2026.
What the New Laws Require
Most of the new rules are about documents: what counts as ID, and what proves citizenship. Several are in force for the November 2026 election.
Some new rules apply to every voter in a state, and others to a smaller group.
Voting restrictions enacted in 2025 and 2026, by status for November 2026
College students often lack a government ID from the state where they vote, the Brennan Center notes, and millions of Americans lack easy access to a passport or birth certificate.
The Racial Turnout Gap Is Widening
The Census Bureau measures turnout 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.
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| White alone, not Hispanic | 70.5% |
| Black alone | 59.6% |
| Asian alone | 57.1% |
| Hispanic (any race) | 50.6% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2024 (P20-590), Table 2; citizens 18 and over who reported voting.
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 chart 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. In 2024, members of the Fort Peck tribe in Montana had to travel 30 to 60 miles to vote after being denied a satellite election office in a more accessible location, the same Brennan Center analysis notes.
Preclearance put the burden of proof on the state. Losing it moved that burden onto voters.
With Preclearance (1965-2013)
- Discriminatory rules reviewed before they took effect
- 1,116 Justice Department objections from 1965 to 2004
- Black registration in Mississippi rose from 6.7% to 59.8%
- States had to prove a change was not discriminatory
Without Preclearance (2013-2026)
- Discriminatory rules take effect immediately
- Voters sue afterward, through years of litigation
- 1,688 polling places closed in 13 formerly supervised states
- 125 restrictive laws enacted from 2021 through September 1, 2026
What Communities Lose Without Representation
Voting restrictions reach past election night. Who holds a legislative seat decides which schools get funded, which roads get paved, and which neighborhoods wait.
When the Voting Rights Act opened the ballot, public money followed the new voters.
Economists Elizabeth Cascio and Ebonya Washington tested that directly. Comparing counties across 20 years, they found that once literacy tests ended, counties with larger Black populations in former literacy-test states saw bigger gains in both turnout and state aid than similar counties elsewhere (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2014). Votes moved budgets.
The gaps that remain are large. In 2022, EdTrust found that districts with the most Black, Latino, and Native students receive as much as $2,700 less in state and local funding per student than districts with the fewest, or $13.5 million a year for a 5,000-student district. That study measures the gap, not its cause, but the Cascio and Washington finding shows which way the money moves when a community gains or loses its vote.
Is the Voting Rights Act Still in Effect?
Yes. The Voting Rights Act is still federal law, and Section 2, its ban on voting rules that discriminate by race, has no expiration date. What changed is how much of it can be enforced. Preclearance is still in the statute but covers no state since 2013, and the coverage provisions Congress renewed in 2006 expire on July 27, 2031 unless Congress acts again. The rules requiring translated ballots run through August 6, 2032.
Where the Voting Rights Act Stands Today
Section 5 has no one to apply to, and Section 2 is much harder to use against a map. Most of what remains is in court or in Congress, so every piece below carries a date.
Most of the Act is now final, in litigation, or stalled in Congress.
Where Each Part of the Voting Rights Act Stands
As of September 26, 2026
- Section 5 preclearance Final ruling, no one covered
The coverage formula was struck in Shelby County on June 25, 2013. (source)
- Section 2 map challenges Final ruling, narrowed
Callais requires a strong inference of intentional discrimination, April 29, 2026. (source)
- Alabama congressional map In litigation
The Supreme Court stayed the order against the 2023 map on June 2, 2026. The plaintiffs asked it to reject Alabama's appeal on September 18. (source)
- Private suits in 7 Plains states In litigation
Tribes moved to file an amended complaint in North Dakota on August 28, 2026. (source)
- Section 3(c) bail-in Law, rarely used
A court declined to bail in Alabama on August 7, 2025. (source)
- Section 203 language access Law
No Supreme Court ruling has narrowed it. (source)
- John Lewis Act (H.R. 14, S. 2523) Proposal
In committee since 2025, with no action. (source)
Source: Supreme Court opinions and orders; govinfo bill status; Loyola Law School All About Redistricting; Native American Rights Fund; Campaign Legal Center
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would build a new preclearance formula out of recent findings of discrimination rather than 1960s data. A state would be covered with 15 or more voting rights violations in the past 25 years, or 10 or more if the state itself committed one. Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama, whose district includes Selma, introduced H.R. 14 on March 5, 2025, and it has 221 cosponsors, all Democrats. Senator Dick Durbin introduced S. 2523 on July 29, 2025, with Senator Raphael Warnock among 46 cosponsors, all Democrats or independents. Neither has moved out of the Judiciary Committee. The last time any version reached a Senate floor vote, on January 19, 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. After Callais, the Supreme Court sent the case back on May 11, 2026, and the trial court found intentional discrimination again on May 26. On June 2 the Supreme Court let Alabama use the 2023 map anyway for this year’s elections. Alabama appealed, and on September 18 the voters who won asked the Court to dismiss the appeal as moot. A finding of intentional discrimination, the showing Callais now demands, did not produce a remedy in time for the election.
Whether voters 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, which would leave enforcement in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota to the Justice Department alone.
The North Dakota case shows what rides on the answer. After a four-day trial in 2023, a federal court found that the state’s legislative map left Native Americans with no state Senate seats and two House seats, where either plan the Turtle Mountain and Spirit Lake tribes proposed would have produced one Senate seat and three House seats. In May 2026, the Supreme Court vacated the 2025 ruling that erased that win and sent it back for another look under Callais. The tribes moved to file an amended complaint on August 28. North Dakota’s secretary of state argued on September 11 that the 2023 ruling still bars private suits in the circuit, so the question is live again.
Three pieces of the Act still stand, and they are worth knowing by name.
Section 3(c), the bail-in. A federal court that finds a jurisdiction intentionally discriminated can place it under preclearance by court order. It survived Shelby County untouched and is the only route by which any American jurisdiction faces federal review of voting changes today. It is rarely used: the Alabama court that found intentional discrimination considered it and declined on August 7, 2025.
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 their own, according to Campaign Legal Center: California, New York, Oregon, Virginia, Connecticut, Washington, Minnesota, Colorado, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey. Some include preclearance requirements, and California strengthened its law in September 2026. Michigan’s act passed the state Senate on June 16, 2026 and has not been enacted. Democracy Docket reported on May 1, 2026 that Callais could strengthen challenges to these state laws, though the ruling did not address them.
State courts are the other venue that remains. Many state constitutions carry their own voting guarantees, 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. 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. Justice Kavanaugh had already written, concurring in Allen v. Milligan in 2023, that race-based redistricting cannot “extend indefinitely into the future.”
The case against comes from the three dissenting justices. 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. A state court can strike a voting law under its own constitution 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 changed is that a map claim now needs evidence supporting a strong inference of intentional discrimination. Unequal effects alone no longer carry it.
- Some states expanded access in the same period. At least 15 states enacted 31 laws making voting easier between January 1 and September 1, 2026, and lawmakers in at least 42 states considered no fewer than 581 expansive bills (Brennan Center).
- 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was the Voting Rights Act passed?
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, sent federal registrars into counties that turned Black applicants away, and required some states to get federal approval before changing voting rules.
Is the Voting Rights Act still in effect?
Yes. It is still federal law, and Section 2 has no expiration date. The Supreme Court ended preclearance coverage in 2013 and made Section 2 map challenges harder to win in April 2026, so much less of it can be enforced.
When does the Voting Rights Act expire?
Section 2 never expires. The coverage provisions Congress renewed in 2006 expire on July 27, 2031, and the translated-ballot requirements run through August 6, 2032, unless Congress extends them.
Is the Voting Rights Act repealed?
No. The statute is still federal law. Congress has never repealed it; the 2006 renewal dropped only the federal examiner provisions. What the Supreme Court did was strike the formula that made Section 5 usable and raise the proof needed to challenge a map under Section 2. Most of the text is intact, and much of 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 would set national rules for federal elections, such as early voting, voting by mail and same-day registration. 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 and did not mention state acts. Democracy Docket reported on May 1, 2026 that it could strengthen challenges to them, after a senior Justice Department civil rights official, replying to Maryland’s governor, implied that the ruling also invalidated state acts.
What You Can Do
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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. Every cosponsor so far is a Democrat or an independent, and neither bill has left the Judiciary Committee. Ask for a yes or no on the record. If yours already cosponsors, ask them to press the Judiciary Committee for a hearing.
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Check your own registration now. South Dakota and Utah now demand citizenship documents from everyone who registers, and a purge or an address mismatch is easier to fix before Election Day than at the polls. If anything looks wrong, call 866-OUR-VOTE at 866-687-8683.
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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 North Dakota case that decides whether private voters can sue at all in seven states.
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Vote in your state supreme court races. With federal claims narrowed, state constitutions are a main route for challenging restrictive laws, and in states that elect their justices, the judges who hear those cases face voters directly.
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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.