Durbin, Warnock Reintroduce John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Senator Reverand Raphael Warnock (D-GA), along with U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and all other Senate Democrats, today reintroduced theJohn R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation that would update and restore critical safeguards of the originalVoting Rights Act.

This legislation is especially relevant in Texas where, followinghistoric disapprovalof Congressional Republicans’ tax bill, Texas state lawmakers are looking to add five additional Republicans. The move comes in direct response to President Trump’sfearsthat voters may flip the House in the 2026 midterms.

“There is no freedom more fundamental than the right to vote. But between the Trump Administration’s executive order on voter registration and state legislatures gerrymandering districts, there has been a clear, concerted effort to chip away at the protections guaranteed to every American under theVoting Rights Act,”said Durbin.“In the face of these injustices that target communities of color and their right to vote, we must continue the work of civil rights leaders like John Lewis and strengthen the framework of theVoting Rights Actby passing theJohn R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.”

“As I often say, a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and our children,”said Warnock.“Our prayers are stronger when we pray together. Democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea that each of us has within ourselves the spark of the divine. We all have value, and if we all have value, we ought to have a voice in the direction of our country; we ought to have a vote.”

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s damagingShelby Countydecision in 2013—which crippled the federal government’s ability under theVoting Rights Act of 1965to prevent discriminatory changes to voting laws and procedures—states across the country have unleashed a torrent of voter suppression schemes that have systematically disenfranchised tens of thousands of American voters. The Supreme Court’s decision inBrnovichdelivered yet another blow to theVoting Rights Act, by making it significantly harder forplaintiffs to win lawsuits under the landmark law against discriminatory voting laws or procedures.

Durbin and Warnock marked the reintroduction of the legislation with a press conference, available to viewhere.

In addition to Durbin, Warnock, Schumer, Booker, and Blumenthal, the legislation is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Ed Markey (D-MA), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), John Fetterman (D-PA), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Jack Reed (D-RI), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Peter Welch (D-VT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Chris Coons (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Mark Warner (D-VA), Patty Murray (D-WA), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Gary Peters (D-MI), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Tina Smith (D-MN), Angus King (I-VT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Brian Schatz (D-HI), and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD).

TheJohn R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Actis endorsed byhundreds of organizations.

The full text of theJohn R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Actcan be foundhere.

A section-by-section analysis of theJohn R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Actcan be foundhere.

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