Issue Position: Civil Rights

Issue Position

The US had a checkered history with civil rights prior to the administration of President Lyndon Johnson. In 1964 and again in 1965, LBJ was able to push through two landmark pieces of legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and made racial segregation illegal. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited limiting access to the polls on the basis of race, opening the polls to millions of Americans for the first time.

In the wake of last year's appalling decision by the Supreme Court in the Shelby County case to throw out Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, we are once again seeing efforts around the country to limit access to the polls. Under the guise of protecting the integrity of the vote, numerous laws have been passed requiring voter ID, even though numerous studies by groups as diverse as the Republican National Lawyers' Association and the Brennan Center for Justice have found that the incidence of in-person voter fraud in the U.S. is vanishingly small. These voter ID laws represent a differential burden on groups of voters, and even supporters of these laws have admitted that they are more about suppressing the vote among the elderly, minorities and students. Thankfully, the courts have stayed many of the new laws but it is yet to be seen whether they will be upheld and it is critical that Congress act to restore protections.

In other areas of civil rights, the struggle also continues. Women's access to reproductive care, including contraception, is under attack around the Nation. Despite majority public support for legalizing same-sex marriage, there are still too many states where such marriages are illegal. The challenges that the LGBT community faces with regard to employment and housing must be addressed.

Much vigilance is needed to preserve long-protected rights, and we must continue our efforts to make America an ever more just society. We should not be wasting time refighting and re-litigating issues on which we have made such progress, however slowly and haltingly, over the past 238 years.

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