The Supreme Court May Be About To Deal A Final Blow To The Voting Rights Act

The conservative court has subjected the law to death by a thousand cuts over the years — and now is poised to kill it completely on its 60th birthday.

The march for voting rights from Selma, Alabama, to the capital of Montgomery in 1965 wasn’t meant to lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. But then came the horror of the scenes on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where police fractured the late John Lewis’ skull and beat organizer Amelia Boynton unconscious, with much of the violence caught on camera. It swayed public opinion: President Lyndon Johnson delivered the voting rights bill to Congress soon after, and it became law on Aug. 6, 1965.

“So, we will move step by step — often painfully but, I think, with clear vision — along the path toward American freedom,” Johnson said upon signing the bill.

Sixty years later, opponents of the Voting Rights Act have moved step by step, often painfully, backwards on that path. In the hands of conservative opponents of voting rights, the Supreme Court has subjected the Voting Rights Act to death by a thousand cuts. Some of those cuts have been small, such as limiting how courts consider challenges brought under the law. And some have been large, as in the 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder that ended the requirement for certain states with histories of discrimination to submit election changes and district maps to the Department of Justice for approval.

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But now the court appears ready for one final cut, to kill off the last remaining piece of the act that allows the people to challenge racially discriminatory election practices.