Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Public Law 89-110), signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965, is the foundational federal statute enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment's guarantee that the right to vote "shall not be denied or abridged… on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Enacted in the aftermath of the violent suppression of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, the Act dismantled the literacy tests, poll-tax surrogates, and "good character" clauses that Southern states had used since the post-Reconstruction era to disenfranchise Black voters. Its constitutional warrant rests on Congress's enforcement power under Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment, upheld by the Supreme Court in South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966).

The Act's machinery operates through two principal provisions. Section 2 is a permanent, nationwide ban on any voting practice that results in racial discrimination — applicable everywhere and the basis for most modern vote-dilution litigation, including challenges to redistricting and at-large electoral schemes (see Thornburg v. Gingles, 1986). Section 5 imposed "preclearance": jurisdictions with a documented history of discrimination, identified by the coverage formula in Section 4(b), could not change any voting rule without prior approval from the U.S. Attorney General or the District Court for the District of Columbia. The Act also suspended literacy tests, dispatched federal examiners and observers, and — reinforced by the Twenty-Fourth Amendment (1964) and Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) — closed the door on poll taxes. Congress reauthorized and expanded the Act in 1970, 1975 (adding language-minority protections), 1982, and 2006.

The Act produced a rapid, measurable surge in Black voter registration across the Deep South — in Mississippi, registration of eligible Black citizens rose from roughly 7 percent in 1964 to over 60 percent within a few years. Its most consequential modern development came in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), in which the Supreme Court, by 5–4, struck down the Section 4(b) coverage formula as unconstitutional, reasoning that it was based on decades-old data and violated the principle of equal state sovereignty. This decision rendered Section 5 preclearance dormant in practice, since no jurisdictions remain "covered." As of 2026, Section 2 litigation remains the primary tool against discriminatory voting laws — affirmed in Allen v. Milligan (2023), which upheld Section 2's application to Alabama's congressional map — while proposed restorative legislation such as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act has not been enacted.

For the FSOT, the Act is tested in both the U.S. Government and U.S. History sections as a capstone of the civil-rights movement and as a study in federalism and judicial review. Expect questions distinguishing Section 2 (permanent, nationwide) from Section 5 (preclearance, now inactive), identifying the Shelby County holding and its effect, and connecting the Act to the Fifteenth and Twenty-Fourth Amendments. Candidates should also be able to place it alongside the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and link it to the Selma campaign and President Johnson's "We Shall Overcome" address to Congress.