Introduction To Federal Voting Rights Laws
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
The 1965 Enactment
By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had been under way for
some time, but had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost
entirely ineffectual. The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained
national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism. Finally, the
unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965, by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund
Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, en route to the state capitol in Montgomery, persuaded the
President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights
legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings began
soon thereafter on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act.
Congress determined that the existing federal anti-discrimination laws were not sufficient to
overcome the resistance by state officials to enforcement of the 15th Amendment. The legislative
hearings showed that the Department of Justice's efforts to eliminate discriminatory election
practices by litigation on a case-by-case basis had been unsuccessful in opening up the registration
process; as soon as one discriminatory practice or procedure was proven to be unconstitutional and
enjoined, a new one would be substituted in its place and litigation would have to commence anew.
President Johnson signed the resulting legislation into law on August 6, 1965.
Section 2 of the
Act, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition
against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the literacy tests on a nationwide basis.
Among its other provisions, the Act contained special enforcement provisions targeted at those
areas of the country where Congress believed the potential for discrimination to be the greatest.
Under Section 5, jurisdictions covered by these special provisions
could not implement any change affecting voting until the Attorney General or the United States
District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the change did not have a
discriminatory purpose and would not have a discriminatory effect. In addition, the Attorney
General could designate a county covered by these special provisions for the appointment of a
federal examiner to review the qualifications
of persons who wanted to register to vote. Further, in those counties where a federal examiner
was serving, the Attorney General could request that federal
observers monitor activities within the county's polling place.
The Voting Rights Act had not included a provision prohibiting poll taxes, but had directed the
Attorney General to challenge its use. In Harper v. Virginia State Board of
Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), the Supreme Court held Virginia's poll tax to be unconstitutional
under the 14th Amendment. Between 1965 and 1969 the Supreme Court also issued several key decisions
upholding the constitutionality of Section 5 and affirming the broad range of voting practices
that required Section 5 review. As the Supreme Court put it in its 1966 decision upholding the
constitutionality of the Act:
Congress had found that case-by-case litigation was inadequate to combat wide-spread
and persistent discrimination in voting, because of the inordinate amount of time and energy
required to overcome the obstructionist tactics invariably encountered in these lawsuits. After
enduring nearly a century of systematic resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress might well
decide to shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims.
South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 327-28 (1966).
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The 1970 and 1975 Amendments
Congress extended Section 5 for five years in 1970 and for seven years in 1975. With these
extensions Congress validated the Supreme Court's broad interpretation of the scope of Section 5.
During the hearings on these extensions Congress heard extensive testimony concerning the ways in
which voting electorates were manipulated through gerrymandering, annexations, adoption of at-large
elections, and other structural changes to prevent newly-registered black voters from effectively
using the ballot. Congress also heard extensive testimony about voting discrimination that had
been suffered by Hispanic, Asian and Native American citizens, and the 1975 amendments added
protections from voting discrimination for language minority citizens.
In 1973, the Supreme Court held certain legislative multi-member districts unconstitutional
under the 14th Amendment on the ground that they systematically diluted the voting strength of
minority citizens in Bexar County, Texas. This decision in White v. Regester,
412 U.S. 755 (1973), strongly shaped litigation through the 1970s against at-large systems and
gerrymandered redistricting plans. In Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980),
however, the Supreme Court required that any constitutional claim of minority vote dilution must
include proof of a racially discriminatory purpose, a requirement that was widely seen as making
such claims far more difficult to prove.
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The 1982 Amendments
Congress renewed in 1982 the special provisions of the Act, triggered by coverage under Section 4
for twenty-five years. Congress also adopted a new standard, which went into effect in 1985,
providing how jurisdictions could terminate (or "bail out" from)
coverage under the provisions of Section 4. Furthermore, after extensive hearings, Congress amended Section 2
to provide that a plaintiff could establish a violation of the Section without having to prove
discriminatory purpose.
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