LDEF: The Voting Rights Act Turns 60 - Where do we go from here>?

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the most significant statutory change in the relationship between the federal and state governments in the area of voting since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War; and it was immediately challenged in the courts. Between 1965 and 1969, the Supreme Court issued several key decisions upholding the constitutionality of Section 5 and affirming the broad range of voting practices for which preclearance was required. [See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 327-28 (1966) and Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U.S. 544 (1969)]  In 2013, the Court struck down a key provision of the act involving federal oversight of voting rules in nine states.

Noone has done more to vindicate the right to vote in the last 100 years than the NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE FUND. * Now called the  LDEF they continue to provide essential leadership...while Republicans seek to knock Black voters out with five new white-dominated Texas districts.  And John Roberts - the Chief Justice - is no ally.  He was the author of the disastrous 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision.  But Roberts has sometimes done the right thing, as Michael Dorf explains HERE:

In Allen v. Milligan, Chief Justice Roberts again delivered the opinion of the Court, but this time he rejected a challenge to the VRA. Joined by the Court’s three Democratic appointees and (in nearly all of the opinion) Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Chief Justice reaffirmed a key 37-year-old precedent—Thornburg v. Gingles—that allows VRA plaintiffs to sue to block legislative redistricting maps that have the effect of diluting minority voting strength. 

* See Kevin Boyle's  2004 National Book Award winning Arc of Justice ,  A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age

LDEF: The Voting Rights Act Turns 60 - Where do we go from here>?

"There is no denying, however, that the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions." - John J. Roberts for the majority

SIXTY YEARS AND COUNTING: While most consider July 4 the start of American democracy, the United States’ “true” birthday happened not in 1776, but nearly 200 years later, in 1965. With the passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), our multiracial and multiethnic democracy finally had a birth certificate to represent the founding of a nation that allowed all of its citizens — through their votes — a fair shot at shaping its evolution.

Sixty years ago today, on August 6, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the VRA into law, enshrining protections for voters across the country who were historically denied access to the ballot box. The VRA was one of the most significant achievements of the civil rights movement, ending Jim Crow-era tactics that were employed to stop Black voters from exercising their fundamental right. The legislation was visionary and game-changing: It established “preclearance” requirements that stopped voting discrimination before it occurred and provided voters across the country with essential tools to fight discriminatory election rules and practices.