Supreme Court to consider scope of voting rights protections for minorities as GOP pushes to tighten rules

The Voting Rights Act was ushered through Congress in 1965 in order to protect the right to vote for Black people and other minority groups who had been systematically excluded from the U.S. political system in the centuries beforehand.

On Tuesday, as Republican lawmakers push to pass laws around the country that could make it harder for minority groups to vote, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a major case over the landmark 1960s legislation that may give the new bills a better shot at standing up against legal challenges.

In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19-1257, the justices will hear a 2016 case over voting rules in Arizona that poses questions at the heart of the current debate that gripped the country in the wake of the presidential contest between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

The court will consider the sweep of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which forbids states from making laws that restrict citizens‘ ability to vote on account of their race. The law specifies that a state can violate Section 2 if elections are not „equally open“ to minority groups and the rest of the electorate based on the „totality of circumstances.“