Journalists now commonly say that the Court “gutted” the Voting Rights Act. The more appropriate terminology might be to say that it defanged federal enforcement of that act. But looking deeper, it might be even more appropriate to say that the Shelby County v. Holder decision committed violence against the Fourteenth Amendment itself, of which the Voting Rights Act is a distant descendant. That much has been made clearer as the Court, following a thread of reasoning established in 2013, has taken on additional voting-rights cases, and furthered Roberts’s mandate to distance the federal judiciary from Thurgood Marshall’s vision of those bodies as active watchdogs for the Fourteenth and arbiters for America’s racial injustices.
Voting Rights: A Retrospective
Voting Rights: A Retrospective
This exhibit chronicles the ebb and flow of voting rights in America, from the Founding Era to the current day.
Founding Era
View Connections05Reconstruction
View Connections20Women's Suffrage
View Connections20Civil Rights Movement
View Connections20Voting Rights Today
View Connections20Voting Rights: A Retrospective
Voting Rights Today
How a Pivotal Voting Rights Act Case Broke America
In the five years since the landmark decision, the Supreme Court has set the stage for a new era of white hegemony.……