The hard-fought gains of the 1965 Voting Rights Act faced challenges back in July of 2022, when a Senate Republican filibuster prevented the passage of the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act. It was reintroduced again in March of this year in the House of Representatives by Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) and in the Senate by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA). As of September, it has been put to halt again by the U.S. Senate. It received full support of the House Democratic Caucus.
Voter rights are a hotly debated topic in modern times with heightened tense conversations surrounding race, class, and gender, regularly bombarding the American news cycle as the Trump Administration achieves its goals.
The purpose of the bill is to emphasize the key focal points of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. If the John R. Lewis Act passes — it would restore preclearance, protect voters from discriminatory practices and increase government transparency.
When the bill was reintroduced this past summer of 2025, The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) issued a statement from their director, Justin Kwasa:
“We’re continuing to see attack after attack from extremist Republican politicians on our voting rights across the country, especially against historically excluded communities of color and communities with low wealth — the same voters who bear the greatest burden of environmental injustice. Expanding and protecting our voting rights is critical to ensure every voter’s voice is heard at the ballot box — no matter their race, income, or zip code.”
The statement continued, “Sixty years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and after more than a decade of consistent rollbacks by MAGA Supreme Court Justices, Congress must pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act to restore bedrock protections against racist voter suppression, and pass other strong voting rights legislation including the Freedom to Vote Act and D.C. Statehood.”
The John R. Lewis Act is a popular bill with 70 percent of voters currently in support of it, according to the Brennan Center organization.
Back in 2022, the bill would have made Election Day a national holiday, ensure access to early voting and mail-in ballots—which became especially popular during the COVID-19 pandemic—and enable the Justice Department to intervene in states with a history of voter interference, among other changes. The legislation passed the House.
By a vote of 49-51, President Joe Biden was ultimately rebuffed by two Democrat senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, who refused to change Senate procedures for this one bill.
Voting rights advocates are warning that Republican-led states nationwide are passing laws to make it much more difficult for African-Americans to cast a ballot. They contend it is an effort to consolidate polling locations while requiring certain types of identification and order other changes to reduce Black voter turnout which overwhelmingly favors Democrat candidates.
“As I often say, a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and our children,” said Senator Warnock (D-Ga) this summer. “Our prayers are stronger when we pray together. Democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea that each of us has within ourselves, the spark of the divine. We all have value, and if we all have value, we ought to have a voice in the direction of our country; we ought to have a vote.”
Senate Democrats decided to push ahead with the voting package, despite the potential for a high-stakes defeat for President Biden and his party. Democrats wanted to force Republican senators on record—even their own party holdouts—to show voters where the opposition party stands.
“There is no freedom more fundamental than the right to vote. But between the Trump Administration’s executive order on voter registration and state legislatures gerrymandering districts, there has been a clear, concerted effort to chip away at the protections guaranteed to every American under the Voting Rights Act,” said Durbin. “In the face of these injustices that target communities of color and their right to vote, we must continue the work of civil rights leaders like John Lewis and strengthen the framework of the Voting Rights Act by passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to continue the fight and ridiculed Republican claims that the new election laws in 19 Republican-led states will not end up hurting voter turnout.
The above measure is also expected to fail as Manchin and Sinema have said they are unwilling to change the rules on a party-line vote by Democrats alone.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris was expected to be the deciding vote, provided all 50 Democrats voted in favor of passage. Following her defeat, Harris suggested federal legislation is required to halt the steady nullification of the Black vote.
“We’re not going to allow [Republicans] to make it more difficult for people to vote, because we want everyone to vote,” Harris said. “We don’t want to tell anybody who to vote for, but is it not part of our American values to say that everyone’s voice matters? Everyone’s voice counts, and we want to encourage voters to use their voice, and then you make your choice about who to vote for. Let’s not encourage or allow laws to be passed that are intentionally making it more difficult for people to vote.”
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) put it this way: “John Lewis, others, did not give up after the ‘64 Civil Rights Act…so I’m telling everybody, we’re not giving up. If we do not protect the vote with everything that we’ve got, we will not have a country to protect going forward.”
From the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, to the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, here’s a brief timeline of the struggle to gain–and maintain–Black voting rights:
— 15th Amendment ratified. The third of the three Reconstruction amendments, the 15th Amendment prohibited states from taking away the right to vote “on the account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” States could still impose voter qualifications. In time, many former Confederate states did that.
— Colfax Massacre of 1873. A mob of about 150 armed White men in Colfax, the seat of Grant Parish, La., killed between 60 to 150 Black men who had gathered at the courthouse during a hotly-contested gubernatorial election. After Republicans narrowly won the election, an angry White mob exacted their revenge on Black voters present.
— Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1890. In an effort to skirt the 15th Amendment and to functionally disenfranchise Black voters, the state’s constitution was rewritten to institute mechanisms including poll taxes and literacy tests. “Mississippi’s constitutional convention of 1890 was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the nig*er from politics,” said one of the constitution’s framers, Democrat James K. Vardaman, who would go on to become governor and a U.S. Senator.
— Wilmington Massacre of 1898. In Wilmington, NC, a White mob ejected a legitimately elected biracial government and installed White supremacists. Reading from the so-called “White Declaration of Independence,” Democrat Alfred Waddell, the mob’s leader, said “We will no longer be ruled, and will never again be ruled by men of African origin.” As many as 60 people were killed.
— Guinn v. United States 1915. The decision, joined by all eight justices who chose to participate in the case, found that Oklahoma’s grandfather clause exemption to literacy tests violated the 15th Amendment. While the decision had relatively little effect—the state merely found other ways to disenfranchise Black voters—the case would help to establish the NAACP which had filed a brief, as a key voting rights advocate for African-Americans.
— Smith v. Allwright 1944. An 8-1 decision would overturn a previous ruling (Grovey v. Townsend, 1935) concluding that it was in violation of the 14th and 15th amendments for the Texas Democratic Party to prohibit African-Americans from voting in the Democratic primary (aka the White Primary System).The NAACP would argue “[The decision] signaled the beginning of the Second Reconstruction and the modern Civil Rights Movement.”
— President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin, and later was expanded to protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
— Bloody Sunday, March 1965. Up to 600 activists set out in Alabama to march from Selma to Montgomery to advocate for Black voting rights. When the marchers reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River enroute to Montgomery, law enforcement gassed and beat the protesters ultimately hospitalizing more than 50 people.
“I went down on my knees. My legs went out from under me. I thought I was going to die,” said the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.)
— President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act (VRA) 1965. Designed to undergird the protections enshrined in the 14th and 15th Amendments, this watershed piece of federal legislation prohibits discrimination in voting. The VRA would greatly increase Black voter turnout in future elections, particularly those from 1968-1976 which saw an historic amount of African-Americans elected to public office. In the 2012 elections, the percentage of Black voter turnout exceeded that of White voters for the first time in American history.
— Recent extension of the Voting Rights Act. President George W. Bush in 2006 signed legislation extending the VRA for an additional 25 years, saying that “the right of ordinary men and women to determine their own political future lies at the heart of the American experiment.”
Following the Supreme Court decision in 2013 in the Shelby County v. Holder case, states in the south and beyond began to implement a wave of election changes to take advantage of the Court’s steady erosion of the VRA. John R. Lewis Act is particularly significant as Texas and California are currently in a bipartisan war to see which political party will take hold of the house in the upcoming 2026 midterms. President Trump wants to maintain a strong hold over voters rights, making access to voting difficult for marginalized communities — in addition to Black people — such as married women, transgender people and the working class.
