What Did the Voting Rights Act of 1965 Do?

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed the literacy tests and similar tricks that had been used to keep Black Americans and other minorities off the voter rolls, required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to get federal approval before changing any voting rule, and gave the federal government tools to send registrars and observers into polling places. It also created a permanent, nationwide ban on any voting practice that denies or reduces the right to vote based on race, color, or language minority status. Later amendments added protections for voters who speak languages other than English, and a 2013 Supreme Court decision knocked out the formula that made the preapproval system work.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the act on August 6, 1965.¹ It is a distinct law from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which addressed segregation in public places and employment discrimination rather than voting.

The Problem the Act Was Written to Solve

The Fifteenth Amendment had prohibited race-based denial of the vote since 1870, but many state and local governments spent the next century getting around it through literacy tests, poll taxes, character requirements, and intimidation. Earlier federal voting laws relied on suing one discriminatory rule at a time, and by the time a court struck one down, officials had replaced it with another.

The immediate trigger was the March 7, 1965 attack on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, an event that became known as Bloody Sunday. Johnson sent a voting rights bill to Congress in its aftermath.²

Banning Literacy Tests and Other Screening Devices

Section 4 suspended the use of “tests or devices” in any jurisdiction where less than half of the voting-age population had registered or voted in the 1964 presidential election.³ The banned tools included literacy tests, educational achievement tests, and requirements that existing voters or officials vouch for an applicant’s good moral character.¹

These devices were rarely applied fairly. Registrars gave easy questions to white applicants and impossible ones to Black applicants. Congress extended the suspension in 1970 and 1975, expanding the trigger dates to reach additional jurisdictions, and the ban on these screening tools is now permanent and nationwide.⁴

Requiring Federal Approval Before Voting Changes

Section 5 created a preventive mechanism called preclearance. Jurisdictions identified by the Section 4 coverage formula could not change any voting law or procedure without first getting federal sign-off, whether the change involved new district lines, a shifted polling place, or updated registration rules.⁵

A covered jurisdiction had two paths to clearance. It could submit the change to the U.S. Attorney General, who had 60 days to raise an objection, or it could sue in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for a ruling that the change would not discriminate.¹ Either way, the local government carried the burden of proving its proposal would not reduce voting rights based on race. Without clearance, a proposed change was legally unenforceable.

The design solved the pace problem. Instead of chasing discriminatory laws through the courts after they took effect, the federal government could block them before they did. The Supreme Court upheld preclearance 8–1 in South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966), calling the act a “legitimate response” to an “insidious and pervasive evil.”⁶

What Shelby County v. Holder Changed

In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Shelby County v. Holder that Section 4(b)’s coverage formula was unconstitutional because it rested on decades-old data.⁷ The Court did not strike down Section 5 itself. But with no valid formula to identify covered jurisdictions, preclearance has no one to apply to.

The practical result is that jurisdictions once required to seek federal approval no longer need it, unless a separate court order under a bail-in provision requires it in a specific case.⁵ Congress has not passed a replacement formula, so preclearance remains effectively dormant.

The Permanent Nationwide Ban on Discriminatory Voting Practices

Section 2, codified at 52 U.S.C. § 10301, permanently prohibits any voting rule that denies or reduces the right to vote based on race, color, or membership in a language minority group.⁸ It applies everywhere in the country, does not expire, and is the provision behind most modern voting rights lawsuits.

As first written, Section 2 required plaintiffs to prove officials acted with discriminatory intent. Congress amended it in 1982 to focus instead on discriminatory results — whether a voting practice actually disadvantages minority voters, regardless of intent. Courts now weigh the “totality of circumstances” to decide whether the political process is equally open to all participants.⁹

Challenges to Election Maps

Section 2 is often used to attack district maps and at-large election systems that dilute minority voting strength. In Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), the Supreme Court set three threshold requirements a minority group must prove before a vote dilution claim can move forward:

The minority group is large enough and geographically compact enough to form a majority in a single district
The minority group tends to vote for the same candidates
The white majority votes as a bloc consistently enough to usually defeat the minority group’s preferred candidates

All three conditions must be met.¹⁰ The Supreme Court reaffirmed this framework in 2023 in Allen v. Milligan, upholding a Section 2 challenge to Alabama’s congressional map.¹¹

Challenges to Voting Rules

Section 2 also reaches specific voting regulations, including voter ID laws, restrictions on mail voting, and limits on ballot collection. In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), the Supreme Court listed five factors courts should weigh:¹²

The size of the burden the rule actually places on voting, beyond normal inconveniences
How far the rule departs from standard election practices in place when Congress amended Section 2 in 1982
The size of any racial disparity in the rule’s impact
Whether the state’s overall system still provides adequate alternative ways to vote
The strength of the state’s interest in the rule, such as preventing fraud

The decision made Section 2 challenges to voting regulations harder to win, because courts now consider the full range of voting options a state offers.

Federal Examiners and Election Observers

Sections 6 through 9 gave the U.S. Attorney General authority to send federal examiners and observers into covered jurisdictions. Examiners could register voters directly, going around local officials who refused to process minority applicants. Observers monitored polling places, watched ballot counting, and reported irregularities to the Department of Justice.¹ Thousands of voters who had been blocked for years by uncooperative registrars were signed up almost immediately.

Today, federal observers are appointed by order of a federal court under Section 3(a) of the act. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division reviews monitoring requests based on documented evidence of discrimination or interference with voting rights in a specific jurisdiction.¹³

Bilingual Election Materials

Section 203, added by later amendments and now codified at 52 U.S.C. § 10503, requires certain jurisdictions to provide voting materials in a language other than English. The covered groups are American Indian, Asian American, Alaska Native, and Spanish-heritage populations, and the requirement runs through August 6, 2032.¹⁴

A jurisdiction is covered if the Census Bureau determines it meets one of these thresholds:

More than 5 percent of voting-age citizens belong to a single language minority and have limited English proficiency
More than 10,000 voting-age citizens belong to a single language minority and have limited English proficiency
In jurisdictions containing all or part of an Indian reservation, more than 5 percent of voting-age American Indian or Alaska Native citizens have limited English proficiency

The language minority group’s illiteracy rate must also exceed the national rate, with illiteracy defined as not completing the fifth grade. Covered jurisdictions must provide bilingual ballots, registration forms, voting instructions, and other election materials. Where the minority language is historically unwritten, as with some tribal languages, the jurisdiction provides oral assistance in place of written translations.¹⁴

How the Law Has Grown Since 1965

Congress has renewed and expanded the act four times:

1970: extended the temporary provisions and expanded the coverage formula using 1968 election data¹⁵
1975: extended the act again, expanded coverage using 1972 data, and added protections for language minority groups
1982: extended the act for 25 years and rewrote Section 2 to focus on discriminatory results rather than intent⁹
2006: extended Section 5’s preclearance requirement and the bilingual provisions for 25 more years, and expanded attorney fee awards to include expert witness fees¹⁶

The 2006 reauthorization technically runs through 2031, but the 2013 Shelby County decision left preclearance without a working coverage formula. Section 2, the ban on screening devices, the bilingual requirements, and federal election monitoring all remain in force.

1
National Archives. Voting Rights Act (1965)
2
U.S. Senate. The Senate Passes the Voting Rights Act
3
U.S. Department of Justice. Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 52 USC 10303 – Suspension of the Use of Tests or Devices in Determining Eligibility to Vote
5
U.S. Department of Justice. About Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act
6
Justia. South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 US 301 (1966)
7
Library of Congress. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 US 529 (2013)
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 52 USC 10301 – Denial or Abridgement of Right to Vote on Account of Race or Color
9
U.S. Department of Justice. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act
10
Justia. Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 US 30 (1986)
11
Supreme Court of the United States. Allen v. Milligan, 599 US 1 (2023)
12
Justia. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 594 US (2021)
13
U.S. Department of Justice. Election Monitoring
14
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 52 USC 10503 – Bilingual Election Requirements
15
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 52 USC 10303
16
The White House. Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006