20250AJR_003199INT INTRODUCED 2026-05-13 REVISED 2026-05-14 2025 AJR INT Introduced by Assembly Members Bryan, Bonta, Elhawary, Gipson, Jackson, McKinnor, Ransom, Sharp-Collins, and Wilson (Principal coauthors: Senators Richardson, Smallwood-Cuevas, and Weber Pierson) (Coauthors: Assembly Members Addis, Aguiar-Curry, Ahrens, Alvarez, Ávila Farías, Bains, Bauer-Kahan, Bennett, Berman, Boerner, Calderon, Caloza, Carrillo, Connolly, Fong, Gabriel, Garcia, Mark González, Haney, Harabedian, Hart, Irwin, Kalra, Krell, Lee, Lowenthal, Muratsuchi, Nguyen, Ortega, Pacheco, Papan, Patel, Pellerin, Petrie-Norris, Quirk-Silva, Ramos, Rivas, Michelle Rodriguez, Rogers, Blanca Rubio, Schiavo, Schultz, Solache, Soria, Stefani, Valencia, Ward, Wicks, and Zbur) LEAD_AUTHOR ASSEMBLY Bryan LEAD_AUTHOR ASSEMBLY Bonta LEAD_AUTHOR ASSEMBLY Elhawary LEAD_AUTHOR ASSEMBLY Gipson LEAD_AUTHOR ASSEMBLY Jackson LEAD_AUTHOR ASSEMBLY McKinnor LEAD_AUTHOR ASSEMBLY Ransom LEAD_AUTHOR ASSEMBLY Sharp-Collins LEAD_AUTHOR ASSEMBLY Wilson PRINCIPAL_COAUTHOR SENATE Richardson PRINCIPAL_COAUTHOR SENATE Smallwood-Cuevas PRINCIPAL_COAUTHOR SENATE Weber Pierson COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Addis COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Aguiar-Curry COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Ahrens COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Alvarez COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Ávila Farías COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Bains COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Bauer-Kahan COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Bennett COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Berman COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Boerner COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Calderon COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Caloza COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Carrillo COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Connolly COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Fong COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Gabriel COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Garcia COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Mark González COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Haney COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Harabedian COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Hart COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Irwin COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Kalra COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Krell COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Lee COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Lowenthal COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Muratsuchi COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Nguyen COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Ortega COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Pacheco COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Papan COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Patel COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Pellerin COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Petrie-Norris COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Quirk-Silva COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Ramos COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Rivas COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Michelle Rodriguez COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Rogers COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Blanca Rubio COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Schiavo COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Schultz COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Solache COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Soria COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Stefani COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Valencia COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Ward COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Wicks COAUTHOR ASSEMBLY Zbur Relative to the restoration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. the restoration of the Voting Rights Act of Restoration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This measure would call on Congress to enact legislation that restores and strengthens the full protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and it would call on the President to sign the legislation. NO

WHEREAS, The right to vote is preservative of all other rights and is the cornerstone of representative democracy, and any erosion of that right threatens the legitimacy of democratic governance itself; and

WHEREAS, Following the Civil War, the Fifteenth Amendment promised that no citizen would be denied or abridged the right to vote on account of race or color, yet states across the former Confederacy quickly devised new methods of disenfranchisement, including poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, White primaries, and violent intimidation, effectively nullifying the Amendment’s guarantee for nearly a century; and

WHEREAS, The Voting Rights Act of stands as one of the most consequential civil rights statutes in the nation’s history, enacted only after generations of racial terror, exclusion, and violence designed to suppress the political power of African Americans; and

WHEREAS, That violence included widespread lynching and brutality against Black Americans who sought to register or vote, with historians documenting massacres such as the Colfax Massacre of in Louisiana and the Hamburg Massacre of in South Carolina, where dozens of Black citizens were slaughtered by White mobs explicitly seeking to suppress Black political participation; and

WHEREAS, Countless ordinary citizens, faith leaders, and civil rights workers bled and died to secure meaningful access to the ballot, including the Reverend George W. Lee and Lamar “Ditney” Smith, both murdered in Mississippi in for encouraging Black voter registration; Herbert Lee, killed in 1961; Medgar Evers, assassinated in 1963; the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner during the Freedom Summer of 1964; and Jimmie Lee Jackson, fatally shot by a state trooper in while peacefully marching for voting rights; and

WHEREAS, The events of “Bloody Sunday” exposed to the world the violent denial of voting rights in the United States when hundreds of peaceful demonstrators, led by figures such as civil rights icon John Lewis, were brutally beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, creating the moral and political urgency that led directly to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and

WHEREAS, Congress designed Sections and of the Voting Rights Act to serve as complementary safeguards, with

Section to prohibit discriminatory voting practices nationwide, and

Section to prevent such practices before they could take effect in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination; and

WHEREAS, For decades, these provisions worked together to dismantle discriminatory barriers and increase minority voter registration, and the Voting Rights Act became widely regarded as the most effective civil rights statute in American history; and

WHEREAS, Congress has repeatedly reaffirmed the necessity of these protections through overwhelming, bipartisan reauthorizations, recognizing that the fight against racial discrimination in voting is an ongoing American imperative, not a partisan issue; and

WHEREAS, The Voting Rights Act was reauthorized and signed into law by Republican Presidents Richard Nixon in 1970, Gerald Ford in 1975, Ronald Reagan in 1982, and George W. Bush in 2006, with the reauthorization passing the United States Senate by a unanimous vote of 98-0 and the House of Representatives by a vote of 390-33; and

WHEREAS, In Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), the United States Supreme Court invalidated the

Section 4(

b) coverage formula, effectively disabling the

Section preclearance regime and prompting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to warn in dissent that discarding preclearance while it remained effective was “like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet”; and

WHEREAS, In the years following Shelby County, numerous states enacted restrictive voting measures, including racial gerrymanders, polling-place closures, voter ID, and new barriers to registration, that disproportionately burdened Black, Latino, Native American, and Asian American voters; and

WHEREAS, On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, sharply narrowing the scope of

Section by requiring plaintiffs to show a heightened form of intent and by rejecting long-standing precedent that allowed courts to consider the real-world effects of vote dilution; and

WHEREAS, In her dissent in Callais, Justice Elena Kagan warned that the Court’s reasoning “renders

Section all but a dead letter,” stripping it of the practical force Congress intended, abandoning the lessons of history, and leaving minority voters without meaningful recourse against discrimination; and

WHEREAS, The dissent further emphasized that Congress designed

Section to be a results-based standard precisely because discriminatory intent is often concealed behind facially neutral justifications, and that requiring proof of intent ignores the amendments Congress passed and President Reagan signed into law in 1982; and

WHEREAS, Taken together, these decisions represent a systematic dismantling of the Voting Rights Act’s core protections, creating an urgent and escalating threat to equal access to the ballot and undermining a core pillar of the nation’s commitment to a multiracial democracy; and

WHEREAS, The systematic weakening of these protections threatens to reverse decades of progress toward an inclusive democracy and risks entrenching structural inequities in political representation at a time when the United States is more diverse than at any point in its history; and

WHEREAS, Without immediate congressional action, such as the passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, communities of color across the nation face renewed risks of vote dilution, discriminatory redistricting, and barriers to participation reminiscent of the very conditions that gave rise to the Voting Rights Act; and

WHEREAS, The State of California has a strong and compelling interest in safeguarding democratic participation and ensuring that federal protections remain robust, enforceable, and accessible to all voters in a multiracial democracy;

now, therefore,

be it Resolved by the Assembly and the Senate of the State of California, jointly, That the Legislature of the State of California respectfully and urgently calls upon the Congress of the United States to act with all deliberate speed to enact legislation that restores and strengthens the full protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and be it further Resolved, That Congress must act without delay to reverse the erosion of voting rights protections and to reaffirm its constitutional authority to enforce the guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment; and be it further Resolved, That the Legislature urges Congress to restore a functional preclearance regime, including a modernized coverage formula grounded in contemporary evidence of discrimination, ensuring that jurisdictions with a record of discriminatory practices must obtain federal approval before implementing voting changes; and be it further Resolved, That the Legislature urges Congress to codify a robust, results-based standard under

Section 2, consistent with the principles articulated in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986), and decades of lower court precedent, to explicitly reject the intent-focused narrowing adopted in Louisiana v.

Callais and provide meaningful remedies to prevent and redress racial vote dilution and discriminatory districting; and be it further Resolved, That the Legislature calls on Congress to honor the bipartisan legacy of the Voting Rights Act by ensuring that its protections remain fully effective in the face of contemporary threats; and be it further Resolved, That the Legislature urges the President of the United States to sign such legislation promptly upon its passage; and be it further Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of this resolution to the President and Vice President of the United States, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the Majority Leader of the Senate, and to each Senator and Representative from California in the Congress of the United States.

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