Voting Rights Amendment Act

The U.S. Supreme Court, in last year’s Shelby County v. Holder opinion, gutted an integral provision of the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for states and localities to enact potentially discriminatory voting changes. This year a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 to re-invigorate the landmark civil rights law. William Yeomans, Fellow in Law and Government at Washington College of Law, American University; Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Assistant Professor of Law University of Chicago Law School; Gabriel J. Chin, Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law; Samuel Bagenstos, Professor of Law at University of Michigan Law School and Gilda R. Daniels, Associate Professor of Law at University of Baltimore School of Law, explain the features of the new legislation and why they believe it would withstand constitutional challenges if passed.