“The right to vote is precious, almost sacred.” Congressman John Lewis’s words rang true when he was beaten by state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965, and they remain vital today.

Our nation has a sordid history of denying the franchise to people of color.  We ratified the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 to prevent states from using race to deny or abridge the right to vote.  What followed was nearly a hundred years of discrimination, under-enforcement, and outright violence that stopped people of color from exercising that right.  The 1965 Voting Rights Act aimed to protect the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment, but it too has been resisted, evaded, and weakened by the federal courts. 

ELC uses constitutional and statutory causes of action to challenge laws and practices that disenfranchise people of color.