Women’s Equality Day: The Fight for Voting Rights Continues

August 26th marks Women’s Equality Day, the anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment prohibiting U.S. citizens from being denied the right to vote on account of sex. The 19th amendment is widely known for giving women the right to vote. Historically, though this is not quite accurate, as many women continued to be prevented from voting due to their race, and racially-motivated voting laws like poll taxes and literacy tests, until much later.

This year, we celebrate Women’s Equality Day just days before the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. That march’s historic goals included expanding and protecting the right to vote to communities of color. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, an Act that has since been instrumental in preventing voter suppression and voting laws that disproportionately impact people of color. One of the most important provisions of the Voting Rights Act was Section 5, requiring that certain jurisdictions with a history of racially-motivated changes and updates to voting laws and procedures would have to get pre-clearance from the Department of Justice before enacting any changes to these voting laws and procedures. This provision was renewed with bipartisan support by Congress in 2006.

This goal of protecting the right to vote is particularly salient this year in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down Section 4 of the VRA – the formula setting out which jurisdictions must submit to preclearance – thus rendering Section 5’s preclearance requirement a dead-letter. The decision means that any claims of racially-motivated unlawful voter suppression can be made only after the laws have already been enacted, with a much heavier burden of proof. Immediately after Section 4 was struck down, Texas wasted no time in putting previously-blocked changes into place. Just weeks later, North Carolina enacted one of the most stringent voter ID laws in the country. Many more jurisdictions are preparing to follow their lead.

Without the protections of Sections 4 and 5, voter suppression efforts have gained new momentum around the country. Voter suppression often takes the form of laws that require specific types of photo identification, and laws that limit when and where people can register and vote. These laws disparately impact marginalized groups including:

• People of color, who are often targeted as being ineligible to vote due to citizenship and are less likely to have government-issued photo identification
• Low-income people, who may rely on early voting in order to not miss work and are less likely to have the required types of photo identification
• Transgender individuals and other people who have changed their names, including women who have changed their names when they got married
• The elderly, who may no longer have access to the documents needed to obtain the mandated types of photo identification
• Students, whose only form of photo identification may be a school identification card

As we have noted before, women are disproportionately represented in many of these groups.

This year on Women’s Equality Day, as we remember the passage of the 19th amendment, we must also acknowledge the inequality and injustice blocking access to the ballot box that persist for too many women. And as we remember the March on Washington, we must remember that the fight for justice is far from over.