Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019. This critical civil rights bill, the result of strong leadership by my colleagues, Ms. Terri Sewell and Ms. Marcia Fudge, will restore the most important enforcement mechanism of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, its preclearance provision, by establishing a new coverage formula to determine which jurisdictions will be subject to preclearance.

The Supreme Court, when it struck down the previous preclearance requirement in 2013, asked Congress to come back with a new preclearance requirement. That is what we are doing.

This formula is self-updating because it requires a continuous, 25- year look back to determine whether, at any given moment, a jurisdiction has engaged in such pervasive discrimination so as to justify imposing a Federal preclearance requirement on any changes to voting laws that it may make.

This formula reflects the substantial evidentiary record developed in numerous hearings before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, of which I am honored to serve as chair, and other committees of this House.

In short, it reflects current conditions and demonstrates the current need for preclearance. It is, therefore, responsive to the Supreme Court's reasoning in Shelby County v. Holder that wrongfully, in my view, struck down the VRA's previous coverage formula.

Maya Angelou told us: ``When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. . . .'' This is what the court does with the preclearance. When they show you that they are going to discriminate against people and try to make it harder for people to vote, believe them and make it more difficult and make them come on the front end and show what they are doing is right.

We have heard from my colleagues some of the egregious examples of continuing and perverse voter suppression efforts by States and localities since Shelby County, particularly those that used to be subject to preclearance under the old formula. These include poll closures and relocations, changes in district boundaries, voter purges, and barriers to voter registration that target racial and language minority voters.

I want to take this opportunity to respond to one of the main arguments my Republican colleagues have raised. We keep hearing from them that H.R. 4 would represent an unconstitutional Federal takeover of State and local elections.

Born in the South, I can tell you that this argument is old wine in a new bottle. It is what previous generations called ``States' rights,'' a loaded term that was used by segregationists and, before them, by the defenders of slavery to justify a legal regime of white supremacy and racial ideology that said African Americans were, at best, second-class citizens and, at worst, less than human beings.

From slavery, to Jim Crow, to what we have today: States' rights.

The Civil War and the 14th and 15th Amendments that followed settled the question that the other side raises by fundamentally reordering the relationship between Congress and the States, making it clear that Congress not only had the power, but the duty, to intervene against States when they engaged in racial discrimination to deny racial minorities the right to vote.

And States did it and did it and did it, and most of them were in the South, and most of them screamed, ``States' rights.''

Do not be fooled by the argument that H.R. 4 somehow exceeds our constitutional authority to address racial discrimination in voting. The other side will say that the Reconstruction Amendments prohibit only intentional discrimination and that, to the extent that H.R. 4 also addresses discriminatory effects of voter suppression tactics, we are not allowed to address those in this bill.

The Supreme Court, in City of Rome v. U.S., made clear that our authority under the 15th Amendment allows us to do just that, and that is what we should do.

H.R. 4 represents exactly what the Reconstruction Amendments contemplated: Congress intervening against States in the face of overwhelming evidence of continuing racial discrimination in voting.

We must not shirk our constitutional duty. We must pass H.R. 4.

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Mr. COHEN. Fudge), who is an invaluable part of this work in the House Administration Committee and had a special committee to work on this. This is very close to her heart.

Before I ask for unanimous consent so that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) can take over the remainder of the time, I would just like to comment.

I have been in this Congress for 13 years now, and before these sections were added that the Republicans oppose, there was simply the Voting Rights Act with a new coverage formula, sponsored by Mr. Sensenbrenner, and it had but less than 10 Republicans on it.

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