Voting Rights Act of 1965

1. A law passed at the time of the civil rights movement. It eliminated various devices, such as literacy tests, that had traditionally been used to restrict voting by black people. It authorized the enrollment of voters by federal registrars in states where fewer than fifty percent of the eligible voters were registered or voted. All such states were in the South.

Example Sentences

He protested alongside Martin Luther King Jr., helped organize and finance the 1963 March on Washington, and was instrumental in gathering support for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act, and Medicare and Medicaid.

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On August 6 of that year, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, prohibiting the literacy tests that for decades had been used to keep Negroes from voting, primarily in the South.

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Louisiana, the court stands poised to either end or severely restrict the scope of Section 2 of the storied Voting Rights Act of 1965, the vehicle by which the courts and the Constitution protect against racialized vote suppression.

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Lawmakers redrew the state’s congressional map after the 2020 census, but a court said the new lines were problematic because they diluted the power of Black voters, which Supreme Court precedents have held violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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Democrats sued in 2022, claiming the district “cracked” the Latino vote in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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