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Democrats named the legislation John Lewis Voting Rights Advances Act in honor of the civil rights icon and longtime congressman from Georgia who died last year.
“John knew the fight for justice never really ends,” Democratic Representative Terri Sewell of Alabama tweeted. “Each generation must fight and fight again to preserve the progress of the past and move it forward. Now it’s our turn.”
The bill would reinstate an aspect of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that allowed the Justice Department to prevent certain jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination from changing their voting rules, after conservative judges in the Supreme Court ruled in 2013 in Shelby County v. Holder that the formula used was obsolete. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently wrote in the Washington Post that the “preclearance” provision of the Voting Rights Act was “extremely effective” and resulted in “thousands of discriminatory vote changes that would have restricted voting rights millions of citizens in jurisdictions large and small. “
The bill also responds to Supreme Court decision 6-3 this year in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, which limited the ability of minorities to challenge laws of states they deem discriminatory under another section of the Voting Rights Act.
The bill faces a strong rise in the Senate, where the vast majority of Republicans oppose it, calling legislation massive federal reach on the role of states in elections. At this point, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski is the only Republican in the Senate who is expected to support the bill.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in June that the bill was “unnecessary” because “it is already against the law to discriminate against voting on the basis of race,” although the legislation would allow the Ministry of Justice to block a law before it comes into force. .
McConnell said the bill “would give the Department of Justice almost full capacity to determine the voting systems of every state in America.”
This story and title has been updated to reflect additional developments on Tuesday.
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