CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2025–2026 REGULAR SESSION

99

Introduced by Assembly Members Bryan, Bonta, Elhawary, Gipson, Jackson, McKinnor, Ransom, Sharp-Collins, and Wilson

(Coauthors: Assembly Members Addis, Aguiar-Curry, Ahrens, Alvarez, Ávila Farías, Bains, Bauer-Kahan, Bennett, Berman, Boerner, Calderon, Caloza, Carrillo, Connolly, Fong, Gabriel, Garcia, Mark González, Haney, Harabedian, Hart, Irwin, Kalra, Krell, Lee, Lowenthal, Muratsuchi, Nguyen, Ortega, Pacheco, Papan, Patel, Pellerin, Petrie-Norris, Quirk-Silva, Ramos, Rivas, Michelle Rodriguez, Rogers, Blanca Rubio, Schiavo, Schultz, Solache, Soria, Stefani, Valencia, Ward, Wicks, and Zbur)

May 13, 2026

Relative to the restoration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Fiscal committee: no

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

This measure would call on Congress to enact legislation that restores and strengthens the full protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and it would call on the President to sign the legislation.

WHEREAS, The right to vote is preservative of all other rights and is the cornerstone of representative democracy, and any erosion of that right threatens the legitimacy of democratic governance itself; and

WHEREAS, Following the Civil War, the Fifteenth Amendment promised that no citizen would be denied or abridged the right to vote on account of race or color, yet states across the former Confederacy quickly devised new methods of disenfranchisement, including poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, White primaries, and violent intimidation, effectively nullifying the Amendment’s guarantee for nearly a century; and

WHEREAS, The Voting Rights Act of 1965 stands as one of the most consequential civil rights statutes in the nation’s history, enacted only after generations of racial terror, exclusion, and violence designed to suppress the political power of African Americans; and

WHEREAS, That violence included widespread lynching and brutality against Black Americans who sought to register or vote, with historians documenting massacres such as the Colfax Massacre of 1873 in Louisiana and the Hamburg Massacre of 1876 in South Carolina, where dozens of Black citizens were slaughtered by White mobs explicitly seeking to suppress Black political participation; and

WHEREAS, Countless ordinary citizens, faith leaders, and civil rights workers bled and died to secure meaningful access to the ballot, including the Reverend George W. Lee and Lamar “Ditney” Smith, both murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for encouraging Black voter registration; Herbert Lee, killed in 1961; Medgar Evers, assassinated in 1963; the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner during the Freedom Summer of 1964; and Jimmie Lee Jackson, fatally shot by a state trooper in 1965 while peacefully marching for voting rights; and

WHEREAS, The events of “Bloody Sunday” exposed to the world the violent denial of voting rights in the United States when hundreds of peaceful demonstrators, led by figures such as civil rights icon John Lewis, were brutally beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, creating the moral and political urgency that led directly to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and

WHEREAS, Congress designed Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act to serve as complementary safeguards, with Section 2 to prohibit discriminatory voting practices nationwide, and Section 5 to prevent such practices before they could take effect in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination; and

WHEREAS, For decades, these provisions worked together to dismantle discriminatory barriers and increase minority voter registration, and the Voting Rights Act became widely regarded as the most effective civil rights statute in American history; and

WHEREAS, Congress has repeatedly reaffirmed the necessity of these protections through overwhelming, bipartisan reauthorizations, recognizing that the fight against racial discrimination in voting is an ongoing American imperative, not a partisan issue; and

WHEREAS, The Voting Rights Act was reauthorized and signed into law by Republican Presidents Richard Nixon in 1970, Gerald Ford in 1975, Ronald Reagan in 1982, and George W. Bush in 2006, with the 2006 reauthorization passing the United States Senate by a unanimous vote of 98-0 and the House of Representatives by a vote of 390-33; and

WHEREAS, In Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), the United States Supreme Court invalidated the Section 4(b) coverage formula, effectively disabling the Section 5 preclearance regime and prompting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to warn in dissent that discarding preclearance while it remained effective was “like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet”; and

WHEREAS, In the years following Shelby County, numerous states enacted restrictive voting measures, including racial gerrymanders, polling-place closures, voter ID, and new barriers to registration, that disproportionately burdened Black, Latino, Native American, and Asian American voters; and

WHEREAS, On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, sharply narrowing the scope of Section 2 by requiring plaintiffs to show a heightened form of intent and by rejecting long-standing precedent that allowed courts to consider the real-world effects of vote dilution; and

WHEREAS, In her dissent in Callais, Justice Elena Kagan warned that the Court’s reasoning “renders Section 2 all but a dead letter,” stripping it of the practical force Congress intended, abandoning the lessons of history, and leaving minority voters without meaningful recourse against discrimination; and

WHEREAS, The dissent further emphasized that Congress designed Section 2 to be a results-based standard precisely because discriminatory intent is often concealed behind facially neutral justifications, and that requiring proof of intent ignores the amendments Congress passed and President Reagan signed into law in 1982; and

WHEREAS, Taken together, these decisions represent a systematic dismantling of the Voting Rights Act’s core protections, creating an urgent and escalating threat to equal access to the ballot and undermining a core pillar of the nation’s commitment to a multiracial democracy; and

WHEREAS, The systematic weakening of these protections threatens to reverse decades of progress toward an inclusive democracy and risks entrenching structural inequities in political representation at a time when the United States is more diverse than at any point in its history; and

WHEREAS, Without immediate congressional action, such as the passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, communities of color across the nation face renewed risks of vote dilution, discriminatory redistricting, and barriers to participation reminiscent of the very conditions that gave rise to the Voting Rights Act; and

WHEREAS, The State of California has a strong and compelling interest in safeguarding democratic participation and ensuring that federal protections remain robust, enforceable, and accessible to all voters in a multiracial democracy; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Assembly and the Senate of the State of California, jointly, That the Legislature of the State of California respectfully and urgently calls upon the Congress of the United States to act with all deliberate speed to enact legislation that restores and strengthens the full protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and be it further

Resolved, That Congress must act without delay to reverse the erosion of voting rights protections and to reaffirm its constitutional authority to enforce the guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment; and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature urges Congress to restore a functional preclearance regime, including a modernized coverage formula grounded in contemporary evidence of discrimination, ensuring that jurisdictions with a record of discriminatory practices must obtain federal approval before implementing voting changes; and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature urges Congress to codify a robust, results-based standard under Section 2, consistent with the principles articulated in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986), and decades of lower court precedent, to explicitly reject the intent-focused narrowing adopted in Louisiana v. Callais and provide meaningful remedies to prevent and redress racial vote dilution and discriminatory districting; and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature calls on Congress to honor the bipartisan legacy of the Voting Rights Act by ensuring that its protections remain fully effective in the face of contemporary threats; and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature urges the President of the United States to sign such legislation promptly upon its passage; and be it further

Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of this resolution to the President and Vice President of the United States, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the Majority Leader of the Senate, and to each Senator and Representative from California in the Congress of the United States.