Blumenthal, Leahy, Schumer & Durbin Lead Senate Colleagues in Introducing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, joined 47 of his Senate colleagues including U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) yesterday in introducing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Led by Blumenthal and U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Dick Durbin (D-IL), the legislation would restore the Voting Rights Act and stop the spreading scourge of voter suppression. As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Blumenthal has recently convened several hearings on voting rights, including one focusing on state-level discriminatory practices and one on the path forward after the Supreme Court’s decisions in Brnovich and Shelby County.

With more than 400 bills aimed at restricting voting rights that have been introduced in 49 states, and successfully enacted in 18 states this year, Blumenthal said, “Nothing is more fundamental and urgent than this legislation to protect voting rights, which are under unprecedented assault in states around the country. John Lewis was a civil rights hero, an icon, a trailblazer, a model, and a mentor to so many of us. In honor of his memory and in tribute to the ideals of democracy that he championed, we should stand up to this assault on our democracy and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. There is no time to waste.”

“The right to vote is the foundation of American democracy, yet Republican legislatures across the country are continuously crafting new ways to deny access to the ballot box. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore and strengthen the protections of the bipartisan Voting Rights Act of 1965 and ensure all Americans have the chance to make their voices heard. I’m proud to honor the life of one of our greatest civil rights heroes by enshrining his legacy in this legislation,” said Murphy.

For nearly five decades, the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance coverage formula provision required certain states with a history of discriminatory voting practices to obtain approval from the federal government before implementing any voting rules changes. The Supreme Court struck that formula in Shelby County, but in so doing it left open a path for other preclearance formulas. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would include new formulas to revive the preclearance requirements by focusing on jurisdictions with a proven history of discrimination.  

Yesterday, Blumenthal spoke on the Senate Floor calling for passing of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Video of his remarks can be found here, and a transcript is copied below.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT): Madam President, I'm so proud and honored to be with my colleagues Senator Leahy and Senator Durbin, Senator Warnock, all of us who are championing the Senate version of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I think any of us would be honored to be spearheading a bill named for one of our heroes. This bill has particular significance to all of us because we lived through the time, the summer of 1965, when state troopers mercilessly attacked John Lewis and 600 others as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in peaceful protest to protect their right to vote.

In the wake of that attack as the nation came together to grieve, President Johnson joined with Congress to pursue as he put it, “An end to voting discrimination in America.” Roughly a week after the attack, President Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights legislation. And two days later Congress announced that it would take up that legislation. And so by early August, just five months after Bloody Sunday in Selma, the Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress with broad bipartisan support and became again in the words of President Johnson, “One of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom.”

Today with the introduction of this legislation, we honor the legacy of John Lewis. We honor everyone involved in that great movement at the time that advanced civil rights and liberties, the most fundamental being the right to vote. And we honor the fight itself to protect the franchise.

A century after the Civil War ended, our nation had failed to eradicate the blight of racial discrimination in voting. And the promise of equality, political equality as well as economic equality remained unfulfilled for black citizens. The Voting Rights Act did what even the 14th and 15th Amendments failed to do proving to be a uniquely powerful tool with the capacity to meet ever new forms of discrimination through its preclearance regime.

Then in 2013 United States Supreme Court in Shelby County, well known to all of us, gutted, absolutely eviscerated the highly effective preclearance regime, jeopardizing the progress that the Voting Rights Act made over the course of half a century. As Justice Ginsburg said in her moving and powerful dissent in Shelby, until Congress enacted the voting rights preclearance requirement, early attempts to cope with the vile infection of racial discrimination in voting, “resembled battling the hydra, whenever one form of voting discrimination was identified and prohibited, others sprang up in their place.”

Today's reinvigorated efforts to deprive members of minority groups from the ballot box to more subtle second-generation barriers proves that a new preclearance regime is needed more now than ever. This year alone, we have experienced the most destructive legislative session for voting rights in generations, with states and localities enacting a torrent of new voting restrictions, all of it designed to suppress the vote, to curtail the franchise, to move back the clock on voting rights. Between January 1 and July 14 of this year, more than 400 voting restriction bills have been introduced in 49 states, and 18 states successfully enacted 30 laws that make it harder for people to vote. These laws make mail-in voting and early voting more difficult, they manipulate the boundaries of districts to reduce minority representation, and they've led to a purge of up to 3.1 million voters from the rolls in areas that were once covered by the Voting Rights Act preclearance requirement.

In short, this threat is more than just speculative. Far from imaginary or suggestive. The threat is the real and urgent. In fact, it is more than a threat. It is action now moving forward in states. Today's legislation would confront this resurgence of voting restrictions very directly. The new John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act includes new formulas to revive preclearance. By focusing specifically on jurisdictions with a proven history of discrimination and on preventing specific known discriminatory practices from taking effect in areas of increasing diversity before they can do damage, this new preclearance coverage formula responds to the Supreme Court's concerns and will allow the Voting Rights Act to keep pace with present conditions and America’s rapidly changing demographics.

The bill also reinvigorates the Department of Justice's ability to challenge discriminatory laws already in effect, reversing the Supreme Court’s latest attack on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. That 6-3 partisan decision was a stunning display of judicial overreach, a highly political, highly partisan decision that gives new meaning to the phrase judicial activism, a case of judicial overreach.

Protecting the right to vote very simply should not be a partisan issue. In fact, voting rights are widely supportive throughout American society on the left, right, center, private, and public sectors. Since the original inception of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, overwhelming bipartisan majorities of both houses of Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act five times. Let me repeat – both houses of Congress, bipartisan majority, overwhelming votes, five times since the original passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. And for nearly a century, after the Civil War and before the Voting Rights Act, the scourge of racial discrimination in voting challenged our nation's core commitment to these ideals of democracy. From that century of sacrifice and suffering came the Voting Rights Act and its extraordinary commitment to realizing our nation's highest ideals. And for decades it worked, with bipartisan support, overwhelmingly.

The Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Senator Durbin and Senator Leahy, has documented powerfully the need for this act, and my Subcommittee on the Constitution has held one hearing already. We will have another shortly that will set the record – in fact, provide the evidentiary support – that the Supreme Court erroneously found lacking in its Shelby decision. As a tsunami of voter suppression bills crashes against the shores of our democracy, my hope is that today we can renew a bipartisan commitment to protecting voting rights in this country. I am proud to help lead this effort in the Senate, and I want to thank my colleagues again for being on the floor today. I yield the floor.

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