Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a law of the United States. It made it easier for African-Americans and non-English speaking citizens to vote.^[7][8] In some parts of the United States, people were forced to pay a poll tax or take a literacy test before being allowed to vote. This process kept many African-Americans from voting. The Voting Rights Act made all of those practices illegal.^[7]

The Voting Rights Act was made to protect the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. It was meant to help racial minorities, especially in the southern states, have a fair chance to vote. The U.S. Department of Justice says it is the most successful civil rights law ever passed.^[9] The National Archives said it was the biggest change in how the federal and state governments handle voting since the Reconstruction time after the Civil War.^[10]

The Voting Rights Act has many rules that control how elections are run. Some rules apply to the whole country and protect everyone’s right to vote. Section 2 says that state and local governments cannot make voting rules that take away or limit a person’s right to vote because of their race, skin color, or language group.^[11] Other rules ban things like literacy tests, which were once used to stop racial minorities from voting.

There are also special rules that only apply to certain places. One important rule, called Section 5, said that some areas had to get permission from the U.S. attorney general or a special court before changing any voting laws. This was to make sure the changes were not unfair to minority voters.^[12] Another rule says that places with many people who speak other languages must provide bilingual ballots and election materials.

Section 5 and most other special rules applied to certain areas chosen by a rule in Section 4(b), called the "coverage formula." This formula was first made to cover places with serious voting discrimination in 1965. Congress updated it in 1970 and 1975. But in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that the formula was outdated and unconstitutional.^[13] The Court didn’t cancel Section 5 itself, but without the formula, Section 5 could no longer be used.^[14] After that ruling, the places that had been covered by the formula started removing more people from voter lists.^[15]

In 2021, the Supreme Court made another big decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee.^[16][11] It changed how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is used, making it weaker. The Court said that rules that affect some groups more than others are not always illegal under Section 2. This included a rule that used to be blocked under Section 5 before the Court made it inactive.^[16][11] The Court also said that fears of election fraud could be used to defend these rules—even if there’s no proof that fraud happened or that the rule would prevent it.^[11]

Research shows that the Voting Rights Act led to a big increase in the number of people voting and registering to vote, especially among Black Americans.^{[17][18][19][20]} The Act also had real effects, like more funding for public services (such as schools) in areas with large Black populations, more lawmakers who supported civil rights laws, and more Black people elected to local government positions.^[21][22][23]

At first, the U.S. Constitution let each state decide who could vote.^{[24][25]: 50} But after the Civil War, three important amendments were added to limit that power. The Thirteenth (13th) Amendment (1865) ended slavery, except as punishment for a crime. The Fourteenth (14th) Amendment (1868) made anyone born or naturalized in the U.S. a citizen and promised equal protection rights and fair treatment. The Fifteenth (15th) Amendment (1870) said that no one could be stopped from voting because of their race, color, or past as a slave. These amendments also gave Congress the power to make laws to enforce these rules.^[26]

To enforce the new rules in the Reconstruction Amendments, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts in the 1870s. These laws made it a crime to stop someone from voting and allowed the federal government to oversee elections and voter registration.^[27]: 310 But in 1875, the Supreme Court ruled in two cases—United States v. Cruikshank and United States v. Reese—that some parts of these laws were unconstitutional. After the Reconstruction Era ended in 1877, the government stopped strongly enforcing these laws, and in 1894, most parts were officially repealed by Congress.^[27]: 310

Southern states tried hard to keep racial minorities from voting during and after Reconstruction. Between 1868 and 1888, violence and cheating in elections were common and used to keep African-American from voting.^[28] From 1888 to 1908, Southern states passed Jim Crow laws to make it legal to stop Black people from voting. These included rules like literacy tests, poll taxes, property requirements, tests on moral character, and making people interpret documents. They also used "grandfather clauses," which let people vote only if their grandfathers had voted—excluding most Black people whose grandfathers were slaves or not allowed to vote.^[27][28] During this time, the Supreme Court mostly supported these unfair practices. In a 1903 case called Giles v. Harris, the Court said that even though the Fifteenth Amendment existed, judges couldn’t force states to let Black people register to vote.^[29]: 100

Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, there were efforts to stop Southern states from keeping Black people from voting.^[7] Besides using poll taxes and literacy tests, officials used other complicated rules to block their right to vote. Black Americans also faced threats, harassment, loss of jobs, and violence when they tried to register or vote. Because of this, very few were able to register, and they had almost no political power locally or nationally.^[30]

In the 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement pushed the government to do more. In 1957, Congress passed the first civil rights law since Reconstruction: the Civil Rights Act of 1957. It gave the U.S. Attorney General the power to sue when someone’s Fifteenth Amendment voting rights were denied. It also created a Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice and a Commission on Civil Rights to investigate problems with voting rights. In 1960, another law (Civil Rights Act of 1960) was passed that allowed federal courts to appoint officials to help register voters in places where racial discrimination was happening.^[9]

While these laws gave courts more power, it was still very hard for the Department of Justice to win cases. For example, to prove racial discrimination with literacy tests, officials had to show that rejected Black applications were just as qualified as accepted white ones. This meant looking at thousands of forms in each county, which took months. Local officials also made things worse by hiding or "losing" records, removing Black voters from the rolls, or quitting their jobs so that registration would stop.

Even when cases were brought to court, many district court judges in the South were against voting rights for racial minorities, so the department often had to appeal over and over. From 1957 to 1964, despite filing 71 lawsuits, Black voter registration in the South barely increased.^[29]: 514 Overall, efforts to stop voter suppression in the South had limited success. In many places, they failed almost completely. One reason was that even when one unfair rule was banned, states would quickly create a new one, forcing the legal process to start all over again.^[7]

To fight widespread discrimination against racial minorities in public accommodations and government services, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law included some protections for voting rights. It required officials to give literacy tests fairly and in writing to all voters and to accept voter applications even if they had small mistakes. It also said that anyone with at least a sixth-grade education should be considered able to read and write well enough to vote.^{[25]: 97 [31][32]}

However, the law did not ban most kinds of voting discrimination, even though civil rights leaders had pushed for it.^[33]: 253 President Lyndon B. Johnson knew this was a problem. After the 1964 elections, where Democrats won big in Congress, he told Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to write the strongest voting rights law possible.^{[25]: 48–50} But Johnson didn’t speak publicly about it yet. His advisers warned that pushing for voting rights so soon after the Civil Rights Act might upset Southern Democrats and hurt his other plans, called the Great Society reforms.^{[25]: 47–48, 50–52}

After the 1964 elections, civil rights groups like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SCLC) pushed hard for a federal law to protect Black voting rights.^{[33]: 254–255} Their efforts led to major protests in Alabama, especially in the city of Selma. There, the local sheriff, Jim Clark, used violence to stop Black people from registering to vote.

James Forman of SNCC explained their goal: they wanted to force the U.S. government to step in. If the government didn’t help, that would show it was not really supporting Black Americans, which would inspire more people to demand change. Their campaign’s slogan was “One Man, One Vote.”^[33]: 255

In January 1965, Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel,^[34][35] and other civil rights leaders led peaceful protests in Selma, Alabama. These marches were met with violence from police and white counter-protesters. The protests continued through January and February and were shown on national TV, drawing attention to the fight for voting rights.^{[33]: 259–261} On February 1, King and others were arrested during a march for breaking a local law against parades ordinance. This led to more marches, and hundreds of people were arrested in the following days.

On February 4, Malcolm X gave a strong speech in Selma, saying that many Black people were tired of peaceful protests.^[33]: 262 Later, he said he gave the speech to scare white people into supporting King’s peaceful efforts.^[25]: 69 The next day, King was released from jail, and his letter about voting rights, called “Letter From a Selma Jail,” was published in The New York Times.^[33]: 262

As more people across the country paid attention to what was happening in Selma, President Lyndon Johnson changed his mind and decided not to wait on voting rights legislation.^[25]: 69 On February 6, he said he would send a voting rights proposal to Congress, although he didn’t say what it would include or when it would be introduced.^[33]: 264

On February 18 in Marion, Alabama, state troopers violently stopped a peaceful voting rights protest at night. During the chaos, an officer named James Bonard Fowler shot and killed a young Black protester named Jimmie Lee Jackson.^{[33]: 265 [36]} He was unarmed and trying to protect his mother. This tragic event led James Bevel to help start the Selma to Montgomery marches.

On March 7, civil rights groups SCLC and SNCC organized the first march from Selma to Montgomery to protest voting discrimination and deliver their complaints to Alabama’s governor George Wallace.^{[33]: 267 [34][35][37]: 81–86} As the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met by state and local police on horseback. The police used tear gas and charged at the crowd, beating many protesters. The violence was shown on TV and shocked people across the country. This day became known as “Bloody Sunday.”^[29]: 515

A second march happened on March 9, known as “Turnaround Tuesday.” That night, three white ministers who had joined the march were attacked by members of the Ku Klux Klan.^[38] One of them, Reverend James Reeb from Boston, was badly beaten and died on March 11.^[39]

Because of the violence in Selma, President Lyndon Johnson gave a speech to Congress on March 15, asking them to pass strong voting rights laws. In his speech, he used the phrase “we shall overcome,” the slogan of the civil rights movement.^{[33]: 278 [40]} Two days later, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was introduced in Congress. Around the same time, civil rights leaders, now protected by federal troops, led a successful march of 25,000 people from Selma to Montgomery.^{[29]: 516 [33]: 279, 282}

The U.S. Department of Justice had tried to stop unfair voting practices by suing states one case at a time, but this approach didn’t work well. Existing federal laws were not strong enough to overcome the resistance from state officials who didn’t want to follow the Fifteenth Amendment, which bans race-based voting discrimination.^[7] Because of this, Congress decided that a new and stronger federal law was needed to stop states from keeping people—especially Black Americans—from voting.

The U.S. Supreme Court explained this in the 1966 case South Carolina v. Katzenbach. The Court said:

In recent years, Congress has repeatedly tried to cope with the problem by facilitating case-by-case litigation against voting discrimination. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 authorized the Attorney General to seek injunctions against public and private interference with the right to vote on racial grounds. Perfecting amendments in the Civil Rights Act of 1960 permitted the joinder of States as parties defendant, gave the Attorney General access to local voting records, and authorized courts to register voters in areas of systematic discrimination. Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 expedited the hearing of voting cases before three-judge courts and outlawed some of the tactics used to disqualify Negroes from voting in federal elections. Despite the earnest efforts of the Justice Department and of many federal judges, these new laws have done little to cure the problem of voting discrimination. [...] The previous legislation has proved ineffective for a number of reasons. Voting suits are unusually onerous to prepare, sometimes requiring as many as 6,000 man-hours spent combing through registration records in preparation for trial. Litigation has been exceedingly slow, in part because of the ample opportunities for delay afforded voting officials and others involved in the proceedings. Even when favorable decisions have finally been obtained, some of the States affected have merely switched to discriminatory devices not covered by the federal decrees, or have enacted difficult new tests designed to prolong the existing disparity between white and Negro registration. Alternatively, certain local officials have defied and evaded court orders or have simply closed their registration offices to freeze the voting rolls. The provision of the 1960 law authorizing registration by federal officers has had little impact on local maladministration, because of its procedural complexities.^[41]

In the same court case South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966), the Supreme Court also said that Congress had the right to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because the Fifteenth Amendment gave it the power to enforce voting rights laws.

Congress exercised its authority under the Fifteenth Amendment in an inventive manner when it enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. First: the measure prescribes remedies for voting discrimination which go into effect without any need for prior adjudication. This was clearly a legitimate response to the problem, for which there is ample precedent under other constitutional provisions. See Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294, 379 U. S. 302–304; United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100, 312 U. S. 120–121. Congress had found that case-by-case litigation was inadequate to combat widespread 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. [...] Second: the Act intentionally confines these remedies to a small number of States and political subdivisions which, in most instances, were familiar to Congress by name. This, too, was a permissible method of dealing with the problem. Congress had learned that substantial voting discrimination presently occurs in certain sections of the country, and it knew no way of accurately forecasting whether the evil might spread elsewhere in the future. In acceptable legislative fashion, Congress chose to limit its attention to the geographic areas where immediate action seemed necessary. See McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 366 U. S. 427; Salsburg v. Maryland, 346 U. S. 545, 346 U. S. 550–554. The doctrine of the equality of States, invoked by South Carolina, does not bar this approach, for that doctrine applies only to the terms upon which States are admitted to the Union, and not to the remedies for local evils which have subsequently appeared. See Coyle v. Smith, 221 U. S. 559, and cases cited therein.^[42]

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, with civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks present.

The Voting Rights Act was introduced in Congress on March 17, 1965, as Senate Bill 1564. It was supported by both the Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield (a Democrat from Montana), and the Senate minority leader, Everett Dirksen (a Republican from Illinois).^[43] They worked closely with Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to write the bill.^[25]: 49

Although Democrats had control of two-thirds of Congress after the 1964 elections, President Johnson worried that Southern Democrats—who had opposed earlier civil rights laws—might try to block the bill with a filibuster. So, he asked Dirksen to help gain support from Republicans. At first, Dirksen wasn’t sure about supporting another civil rights law so soon after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but after seeing the police violence against peaceful protesters in Selma (on "Bloody Sunday"), he agreed to help.^{[25]: 95–96} Because Dirksen helped draft the bill, people sometimes called it the "Dirksenbach" bill (a mix of Dirksen and Katzenbach).^[25]: 96

After it was introduced, 64 other senators agreed to cosponsor the bill. In total, it had 46 Democratic and 20 Republican cosponsors.^{[25]: 150 [44]}

The bill had special rules for certain states and areas, especially those with a history of voting discrimination. These included: a “coverage formula” to identify which places had to follow special rules in the Act, a “preclearance” rule that required these areas to get approval from the U.S. Attorney General or a court in Washington, D.C., before they could change any voting laws, a ban on using “tests or devices” like literacy tests in those areas and Permission for the federal government to send officials to register voters and monitor elections in places with serious discrimination problems. These special rules were set to last for five years.^{[27]: 319–320 [29]: 520, 524 [45]: 5–6}

The coverage formula became a major topic of debate. A state or county was covered if it used a test or device on November 1, 1964, and less than 50% of its adults were registered to vote or had voted in the November 1964 presidential election.^[27]: 317 This formula mostly affected places in the Deep South.To calm lawmakers who thought the bill unfairly targeted Southern states, it also included a rule banning all racial discrimination in voting across the whole country.^[46]: 1352 The bill also allowed areas to “bail out” of coverage if they could prove in federal court that they hadn’t used discriminatory voting practices in the last five years.^[45]: 6 Finally, the bill also included a "bail-in" rule, which allowed federal courts to apply the special rules to places not originally covered by the law if they were found to be practicing voting discrimination.^{[47][48]: 2006–2007}

The Senate first sent the Voting Rights Act to the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, who opposed the bill along with other Southern senators. To make sure the bill didn’t get stuck in committee, Senate leader Mike Mansfield proposed a rule requiring the committee to send the bill to the full Senate by April 9. The Senate approved this rule by a 67–13 vote.^{[25]: 150 [44]}

While the committee discussed the bill, Senator Ted Kennedy tried to add a section banning poll taxes. Although the Twenty-fourth (24th) Amendment had already banned poll taxes in federal elections, President Johnson and the bill's writers avoided including a ban for state elections, fearing the courts would reject it. Also, by not counting poll taxes as a "test or device," the bill avoided targeting Texas and Arkansas, helping to reduce opposition from those states.^{[29]: 521 [33]: 285} Still, Kennedy’s amendment passed in the committee by a 9–4 vote.^[29]: 521

In response, Senator Everett Dirksen suggested a change to exclude any state from the bill’s special rules if 60% of its eligible voters were registered or if the state had higher voter turnout than the national average. This change, which would have left only Mississippi covered, passed while three liberal senators were absent. Dirksen later offered to remove his amendment if the poll tax ban was dropped. In the end, the committee approved the bill without making a recommendation, by a 12–4 vote, on April 9.^{[25]: 152–153}

The full Senate started debating the bill on April 22. Dirksen spoke in favor of it, saying the law was necessary to enforce the 15th Amendment and fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence.^[25]: 154 Opponents like Senator Strom Thurmond said the bill would lead to tyranny, while Senator Sam Ervin argued it was unconstitutional because it took away states’ power to set voter qualifications and targeted specific states in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution.^{[25]: 154–156}

On May 6, Ervin proposed removing the automatic coverage rules and letting judges decide when to send federal examiners to help with voter registration. His idea was strongly rejected by a bipartisan vote. Ted Kennedy’s poll tax ban was also voted down 49–45 on May 11.^[44] However, the Senate agreed to give the attorney general the power to sue any state or local government—whether covered by the bill or not—over poll taxes.^{[33]: 156–157 [45]: 2}

An amendment from Senator Robert F. Kennedy passed, allowing people who didn’t speak English to vote if they had finished at least sixth grade in a non-English school. Southern senators tried to weaken the bill with several changes, but all of them failed.^[25]: 159

On May 25, the Senate voted 70–30 to end debate on the bill and stop a filibuster.^[49] The next day, the Senate passed the bill with a 77–19 vote. Only senators from Southern states voted against it.^{[25]: 161 [50]}

On March 19, 1965, Congressman Emanuel Celler from New York introduced the Voting Rights Act in the House of Representatives as bill H.R. 6400.^[44] He was the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which was the first to review the bill. The top Republican on the committee, William McCulloch from Ohio, usually supported expanding voting rights. However, he did not agree with banning poll taxes or the part of the bill that targeted certain states with special rules (known as the "coverage formula"). He led the opposition to the bill in the committee. Despite this, the committee approved the bill on May 12, but didn’t officially report it until June 1.^[25]: 162

The committee added two changes to the bill: A punishment for private individuals who tried to stop others from voting. A ban on all poll taxes, which won support from House Speaker John McCormack.

Next, the bill went to the House Rules Committee, led by Howard W. Smith from Virginia, who opposed the bill and tried to delay it. On June 24, Celler began the process to force the bill out of committee.^[44] Under pressure, Smith allowed the bill to move forward a week later. The full House began debating it on July 6.^[25]: 163

To try to stop the Voting Rights Act, McCulloch introduced a different bill—H.R. 7896. His version would have allowed the attorney general to send federal officials to register voters only after getting 25 serious complaints of discrimination in an area. It also would have banned literacy tests nationwide for people who had finished sixth grade. This bill was supported by House minority leader Gerald Ford (R-MI) and Southern Democrats as an alternative. President Johnson's team was concerned that McCulloch's bill might derail the Voting Rights Act..^{[25]: 162–164} But support for it dropped quickly after Congressman William M. Tuck (D-VA) from Virginia said he preferred H.R. 7896 because the Voting Rights Act would actually help Black Americans vote. His comment caused many supporters to turn against H.R. 7896. It failed in the House by a vote of 171 to 248 on July 9.^[51] Later that same evening, the House passed the original Voting Rights Act by a strong vote of 333 to 85. Among the votes, 221 Democrats and 112 Republicans supported the bill.^{[25]: 163–165 [44][52]}

The House and Senate picked a group called a conference committee to work out the differences between their versions of the bill. One big disagreement was about poll taxes. The Senate’s version said the attorney general could sue states that used poll taxes to discriminate. The House’s version wanted to ban all poll taxes completely. At first, the committee couldn’t agree. To help solve the problem, Attorney General Katzenbach wrote new language saying poll taxes were unconstitutional and said the Justice Department would sue states that still used poll taxes. To make sure the committee’s liberal members felt this was strong enough, Katzenbach got Martin Luther King Jr. to support this compromise. King’s support helped end the disagreement. On July 29, the committee finished their version of the bill.^{[25]: 166–167} The House agreed to it on August 3 with a vote of 328 to 74,^[53] and the Senate passed it on August 4 with a vote of 79 to 18.^{[25]: 167 [54][55]} On August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and other civil rights leaders were there at the signing ceremony.^[25]: 168

Congress made important changes to the Voting Rights Act in 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006. These changes happened because some parts of the Act were about to expire, but Congress kept extending them because voting discrimination was still a problem. The special rules in the Act, like the requirement for some areas to get permission before changing voting laws ("preclearance"), were first set to end in 1970.^{[25]: 209–210 [45]: 6–8} Congress extended these rules several times: for 5 years in 1970, 7 years in 1975, and 25 years in both 1982 and 2006. In 1970 and 1975, Congress also added new rules that made more areas subject to the Act. In 1975, the rules were expanded to include any place that only gave voting materials in English if there was a language minority group making up more than 5% of voters. This brought many new areas into the Act, including some outside the South.^[56] To make it easier for areas to leave the special rules ("bail out"), Congress made the process easier in 1982 by allowing places to escape coverage if they followed the law and worked to help minorities participate in voting.^[29]: 523 Besides extending the original rules, Congress added new protections. For example, in 1970, the ban on "tests or devices" that stopped people from voting was applied everywhere in the country, and this ban became permanent in 1975.^{[45]: 6–9} In 1975, Congress also added protections for language minorities — groups like American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, and people of Spanish heritage.^[57] It made sure these groups were protected from voting discrimination. A new rule, called Section 203, said that in places with many voters who don’t speak English well, ballots and voting information must be given in their language.^[58]: 199 Section 203 was first set to end after 10 years but was extended multiple times—in 1982 for seven (7) years, 1992 for fifteen (15) years, and 2006—for twenty five (25) years.^{[59]: 19–21, 25, 49} The bilingual voting help has been debated: some say it helps new citizens vote, while others say it costs too much without enough funding.^[59]: 26

Some amendments were made because Congress disagreed with Supreme Court decisions. For example, in 1982, Congress changed the law after a court said that only intentional discrimination was illegal (Mobile v. Bolden (1980). Congress said that any voting rule that had a bad effect on minorities, even if it was not intentional, was illegal.^{[29]: 644–645} In 2006, Congress fixed parts of the law after two court cases: Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board (2000),^[60] and Georgia v. Ashcroft (2003)^[61] that limited the rules about when voting changes needed approval and how to judge unfair voting district maps. After the Supreme Court said the coverage formula (which decided which areas the special rules applied to) was unconstitutional in Shelby County v. Holder 2013, Congress has tried several times to make a new formula, but none of those new bills have become law yet.^[62][63][64]

The Voting Rights Act has two main types of rules: general provisions – these apply to the whole country and special provisions – these apply only to certain states and local areas or governments.^[65]: 1 The law was made to stop subtle and obvious rules that keep people from voting because of their race. It also recognizes that voting includes everything needed to make a vote count. "79 Stat. 445, 42 U.S.C. § 19731(c)(1) (1969 ed., Supp. I). See Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 377 U. S. 555 (1964)."^[66] Most rules protect racial and language minorities. “Language minorities” means groups like American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, or people of Spanish background.^[57] The law has been changed and explained many times by courts and Congress.

Section 2 of the law says no place can have voting rules or practices that stop or limit someone’s right to vote because of their race, skin color, or language minority status.^{[59]: 37 [67]}

Section 2 protects voters in two ways: It stops intentional discrimination based on race or color,^[68][69] it stops voting practices that have the effect of denying the right to vote based on race or color,^{[68][69][70][71]} even if there was no intent to discriminate, if someone intentionally violates this right, it also breaks the Fifteenth Amendment^[70] (which protects voting rights) and the Supreme Court allows private people to sue to stop discrimination under this section.

The Supreme Court has said that private individuals (not just the government) are allowed to sue to stop voting laws that break these rules.^{[72]: 138 [73]} In the 1980 case Mobile v. Bolden, the Court said that when Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was first passed in 1965, it only banned voting laws that were made or kept on purpose to discriminate against people based on race.^{[74]: 60–61 [75][68][7][76]} But in 1982, Congress changed Section 2.^[77] The new version says that a voting law can be illegal even if it wasn’t made on purpose to discriminate—if it still has a harmful effect on minority voters.^{[78][79]: 3 [68][7][76]} This is called the “results” test. However, the changes also made it clear that minorities are not guaranteed a specific number of seats or positions (called proportional representation).^[80] In 1986, in the case Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court said that a Section 2 complaint is about how a voting rule or system, along with social and historical issues, leads to an unfair difference in the chances that Black and white voters have to elect leaders they support.^[81] The U.S. Department of Justice explained that Section 2 is a permanent nationwide rule that bans any voting rule or process that makes it harder for people to vote based on race, color, or language group. It also bans state and local officials from using voting rules that are meant to discriminate in these ways.^[81]

In Chisom v. Roemer (1991), the U.S. Supreme Court explained how it understands Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act after it was changed in 1982.^[82] Before the change, people had to prove that a voting law was created with the intent to discriminate. But after the amendment, that’s no longer required. Now, to win a case under Section 2, someone just needs to show that a voting rule or practice has the effect of denying or limiting someone’s right to vote because of their race or color—even if it wasn’t done on purpose. Congress added the "results test" to the law by splitting Section 2 into two parts: Section 2(a) says that discriminatory intent does not need to be proven. Section 2(b) explains how courts should apply the results test, by looking at the "totality of the circumstances"—in other words, all the relevant facts and context.^[83] There is now a legal process for deciding whether an election rule in a state or local area breaks the updated version of Section 2.^[84]

• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Women's suffrage in the United States

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• The Great Society Congress
• 111 Congressional Record (Bound) - Volume 111, Part 2 (May 25, 1965 to June 8, 1965), Congressional Record Senate May 26 vote roll call p. 11752
• 111 Congressional Record (Bound) - Volume 111, Part 12 (July 7, 1965 to July 16, 1965), Congressional Record House July 9 vote roll call pp. 16285–16286
• 111 Congressional Record (Bound) - Volume 111, Part 14 (July 28, 1965 to August 9, 1965), Congressional Record House August 3 conference report vote roll call p. 19201
• 111 Congressional Record (Bound) - Volume 111, Part 14 (July 28, 1965 to August 9, 1965), Congressional Record Senate August 4 conference report vote roll call p. 19378