In perhaps the most important voting rights case in a generation, the Supreme Court issued a ruling this past June22 that has tremendous implications for African-American and other minority voters. The case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, threatened to strike down a core provision of the Voting Rights Act. The provision at issue—the Section 5 preclearance provision—serves as a roadblock that prevents certain states and jurisdictions with long track records of discrimination from implementing discriminatory laws. The law operates by requiring these jurisdictions obtain federal review of their voting changes before they can go into effect.
While this case was brought with the precise objective of gutting the core Section 5 preclearance provision, the Court rejected the constitutional challenge to the law, leaving the Act in place to protect the rights of minority voters.
Notably, the decision resulted just one day after the 45th anniversary of the infamous murders of three civil rights workers – James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman – who were shot to death while participating in Freedom Summer of 1964, an initiative designed to register Blacks in Mississippi to vote. The following year, peaceful marchers were brutally attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in an event now widely known as Bloody Sunday. The Freedom Summer murders and the violence of Bloody Sunday spurred Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. By leaving the Voting Rights Act intact, the Court’s ruling helps honor the legacy of those who gave their lives and endured violence to extend the franchise to our nation’s Black citizens.
No doubt, we live in a very different country today. There has been significant progress—more Blacks now serve in elected office, registration and turnout gaps have narrowed, and we have lived to see the day where an African-American now occupies the White House.
