The nation marked the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act last month amid renewed legal and political pressure on the landmark law that for decades barred racially discriminatory voting practices. Legal scholars and historians say recent Supreme Court decisions and ongoing challenges by Republican officials threaten key VRA protections, a development that recalls the long, stop‑start struggle to win and preserve voting rights.
The movement to secure the franchise for Black Americans stretches from the nation’s founding through Reconstruction, when the 15th Amendment appeared to guarantee voting rights to formerly enslaved men, and into the 20th century, when Southern states systematically stripped those rights away. States used poll taxes, literacy tests, understanding clauses and other devices to disfranchise Black voters. In Alabama, for example, more than 180,000 Black men were registered to vote in 1900; two years after a new state constitution was adopted, that number fell to fewer than 3,000. By 1944, less than 5% of the Black population in Southern states was voting.
Legal challenges and activism gradually eroded the structures that restricted participation. The Supreme Court’s 1944 decision in Smith v. Allwright struck down all‑white primaries. The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling and wave of civil rights activism that followed—boycotts, sit‑ins and sustained voter‑registration drives by groups including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—helped place voting squarely at the center of the movement. The violent response to civil rights demonstrations in Selma, Ala., including the March 7, 1965 confrontation known as "Bloody Sunday" and the earlier death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, focused national attention and prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to call for federal legislation to protect the franchise.
Congress passed the Voting Rights Act later that year with wide margins—333‑85 in the House and 77‑19 in the Senate—and Johnson signed it into law. The VRA banned racial discrimination in voting and established federal oversight of jurisdictions with histories of exclusion. Under the law’s preclearance regime, covered states and localities had to obtain federal approval before changing voting rules. Within years the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported rapid compliance: between 1964 and 1969 the share of Black Mississippians registered to vote rose from 6.7% to 66.5%, and Black registration in Alabama climbed from 23% to 56.7%. By the end of the decade the total number of registered Black voters had nearly doubled.
Congress renewed and amended the VRA repeatedly with bipartisan support for more than four decades, and presidents from both parties—including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush—signed reauthorizations or extensions. That consensus began to shift in the 21st century as challenges moved to the courts.
In 2013 the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder struck down the formula in Section 4(b) that determined which jurisdictions were subject to preclearance, effectively disabling Section 5’s enforcement mechanism while leaving Section 5 on the books. Writing for the five‑justice majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said “our country has changed” and cited increases in African‑American turnout in some formerly covered states. The ruling freed those jurisdictions to seek to change voting rules without prior federal approval, and in subsequent years several states enacted new requirements and closed polling sites. A federal appeals court in North Carolina later concluded some of those measures targeted Black voters "with almost surgical precision."
Subsequent Supreme Court decisions have further narrowed remedies available under the VRA. The high court is scheduled to hear Louisiana v. Callais in October; advocates and scholars warn the case could further undercut the statute’s protections. Voting rights organizations and Democrats have called for Congress to restore or update the VRA’s preclearance tools, while many Republican lawmakers and states argue federal oversight is unnecessary or intrusive.
Historians who have written about the VRA emphasize the long, uneven arc of the struggle to secure the vote. The law itself was the product of decades of organizing, litigation and political pressure—work by local activists, civil rights organizations, and lawyers such as Thurgood Marshall that chipped away at barriers long before 1965. The passage of the VRA came after a series of legal victories, sustained grassroots registration efforts and dramatic public confrontation that altered national politics and persuaded lawmakers to act.
Scholars say that history offers two related lessons: that protections can be rolled back and that restoring them required persistent legal and civic engagement. The authors of a recent historical overview published in TIME’s Made by History section noted that the VRA ‘‘represented the culmination of a long struggle for Black Americans, one shaped by victories, setbacks, and, most importantly, persistence.’’ The piece was written by historians Ansley Quiros and Allie R. Lopez.
As courts continue to consider cases with implications for the law, the arc of the Voting Rights Act’s history remains central to debates about how to ensure equal access to the ballot. The record shows marked gains after 1965 and decades of bipartisan support for renewal, followed by legal decisions and state actions that have altered the statute’s practical reach. Policymakers, advocates and scholars frame the current moment as another chapter in a long effort to define and protect the right to vote in the United States.