Voting Justice is Environmental Justice

This past Saturday was the 51st anniversary of signing of the historic Voting Rights Act (VRA). It was signed into law in 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson, with bipartisan support. The Voting Rights Act outlawed discriminatory and racist voting restrictions, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, that were established in the South soon after the Civil War to deliberately make it harder, and in some cases impossible, for African Americans to vote.

While we are celebrating this historic civil rights victory, unfortunately the power of the VRA has been limited. The 2016 election will be the first election without the full protection of the VRA. In 2013 the Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the VRA. States that had a long history of intentionally suppressing the vote of African Americans and all communities of color, no longer had to have their state voting laws approved by the Department of Justice. Within hours of the Supreme Court's decision, states with a long history of discrimination passed sweeping laws that limited entire communities from accessing the ballot box.

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