Voting Rights Act: Dying a slow death

The 1965 Voting Rights Act, which turned 60 on Aug. 6, is "being attacked from every angle," said in Mother Jones . The biggest assault is coming from the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts, who "worked strenuously to weaken the law" as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration and has been at war with it ever since. The VRA successfully stopped Southern states from using poll taxes, literacy tests, and other discriminatory tactics to block Black people from voting. But the high court gutted "the heart of the VRA" in 2013, when it ruled that "states with a long history of discrimination no longer needed" federal approval to change their voting laws. A few years later, a Roberts-led majority found that federal courts had no authority to stop states' partisan gerrymanderi