[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1539 Introduced in House (IH)]
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119th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 1539
Affirming the commitment of the House of Representatives to defend the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and to oppose
efforts to intimidate voters, suppress the vote, or interfere with free
and fair elections.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
September 15, 2026
Ms. Mejia (for herself, Mr. Cleaver, Ms. Randall, Mr. Subramanyam, and
Mr. Clyburn) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to
the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committee on
House Administration, for a period to be subsequently determined by the
Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall
within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Affirming the commitment of the House of Representatives to defend the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and to oppose
efforts to intimidate voters, suppress the vote, or interfere with free
and fair elections.
Whereas the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees equal protection
of the laws to all persons and establishes citizenship for all persons
born or naturalized in the United States;
Whereas the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that the right of
citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude;
Whereas these amendments were won through the sacrifice of formerly enslaved
people, and later defended by generations of community leaders and
organizers, including the marchers beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, Alabama;
Whereas the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder invalidated
the Voting Rights Act's coverage formula that determined which States
and localities were required to obtain Federal approval before changing
their voting laws as unconstitutional, weakening the tools available to
enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments;
Whereas, in the years since that decision, States and localities have repeatedly
adopted voting laws and practices that discriminate against voters based
on their race, ethnicity, or language, as evidenced by court rulings
against those entities;
Whereas, on April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais
significantly narrowed section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the primary
tool for challenging racially discriminatory redistricting, by limiting
the circumstances under which race may be considered in drawing
congressional districts and making it more difficult to remedy maps that
dilute the voting power of minority communities;
Whereas, on July 1, 2021, the Supreme Court's decision in Brnovich v. Democratic
National Committee also significantly narrowed the ability of voters to
challenge discriminatory voting rules under section 2 of the Voting
Rights Act by establishing new considerations that make it more
difficult to demonstrate that voting practices deny minority voters an
equal opportunity to participate in the political process;
Whereas, in the months following Louisiana v. Callais, several States have
redrawn congressional maps in ways that eliminate districts where
minority communities' voters previously had the ability to elect their
preferred candidates;
Whereas the Federal Government has long restricted armed presence at polling
places, a restriction now under strain, in that--
(1) sending troops or armed men to polling places has been a Federal
crime for more than 150 years, with a narrow exception for repelling armed
enemies of the United States that has never once been invoked;
(2) officials in the executive branch have acknowledged their intention
to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or other armed Federal
personnel to or near polling places during the 2026 elections; and
(3) immigration agents have already been reported confronting election
workers near polling sites during 2026 primary elections;
Whereas the presence, or threatened presence, of troops, armed Federal agents,
or immigration enforcement personnel at or near polling places can be a
form of voter intimidation that falls most heavily on Black, Latino,
immigrant, and other communities of color, and has no place in a free
and fair election;
Whereas the Department of Justice has separately sought to compile a national
database of voter registration information, in that--
(1) the Department of Justice has demanded unredacted voter rolls,
including partial Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers,
from nearly every State and the District of Columbia, and has sued dozens
of States, led by officials of both parties, that refused to comply;
(2) as of August 2026, the Department of Justice has lost more than 20
consecutive court rulings in its effort to compel States to turn over this
data; and
(3) the Department of Justice has arranged to check State voter data
against a Department of Homeland Security immigration database that has
been criticized for inaccuracies, raising the risk that eligible citizens
will be wrongly flagged and removed from the rolls;
Whereas, in August 2026, the United States Postal Service finalized a rule that
would impose new requirements on the transmission of mail-in and
absentee ballots in Federal elections, including new envelope design,
barcode, data-reporting, and verification requirements, under which the
United States Postal Service must refuse to accept outbound Federal
ballot mail that fails to satisfy such requirements;
Whereas implementation of the United States Postal Service's final rule remains
subject to ongoing litigation as States and local jurisdictions are
beginning to mail ballots for the 2026 general election, creating
uncertainty for election officials and voters, and, if permitted to take
effect, could--
(1) require election officials to rapidly redesign ballot envelopes,
adopt new barcodes, submit voter information through an untested Federal
portal, and comply with new Federal procedures during the busiest period of
election administration;
(2) result in the United States Postal Service refusing to deliver
individual ballots or entire batches of ballots because of technical,
printing, data-entry, or administrative errors outside the control of
voters;
(3) prevent otherwise eligible voters from receiving their ballots in
sufficient time to mark and return them before applicable deadlines; and
(4) disproportionately burden voters who rely most heavily on voting by
mail, including seniors, individuals with disabilities, rural voters, and
voters who cannot easily access an in-person polling location;
Whereas an anonymous United States Postal Service whistleblower with direct
knowledge of the development of the United States Postal Service's new
ballot-mail system has alleged that--
(1) the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and related information technology
systems were developed on a rushed timeline without sufficient testing,
despite an undertaking of such complexity ordinarily requiring
substantially more time;
(2) the United States Postal Service intends to apply a ``zero-percent
failure'' standard under which a single ballot that fails barcode
verification could cause an entire batch containing thousands or tens of
thousands of ballots to be rejected and returned to election officials;
(3) voters whose ballots are included in rejected batches may not know
that their ballots were never mailed until it is too late to obtain another
ballot or vote in person; and
(4) these technological, operational, and verification failures could
delay or prevent potentially millions of eligible Americans from receiving
mail-in ballots in time to exercise their right to vote in the 2026 general
election;
Whereas, on September 14, 2026, the Supreme Court denied the Trump
administration's request to stay a nationwide preliminary injunction
blocking implementation of the United States Postal Service's final rule
for the 2026 elections, leaving the rule blocked while litigation
continues, in that--
(1) the Court concluded that the Government was unlikely to succeed on
the merits of its challenge to the preliminary injunction and that the
equitable factors did not favor emergency relief; and
(2) Justice Brett Kavanaugh, concurring in the denial, concluded that
applying the rule to the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious
because State and local election officials do not have sufficient time to
reasonably implement the new requirements before the elections;
Whereas the House of Representatives has repeatedly passed legislation that
would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in
Federal elections and would effectively eliminate most online and mail
voter registration, including by attaching this policy to unrelated
must-pass legislation such as the National Defense Authorization Act,
despite the fact that more than 21,300,000 eligible voters, including
many poor and working-class voters and married people whose legal name
no longer matches their birth certificate, lack ready access to a
passport or certified birth certificate;
Whereas legislation has been introduced in Congress, including the John R. Lewis
Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Protect Our Polls Act, and the
Protecting Our Democracy Act, which seek to restore Federal protections
against discriminatory voting changes, to require congressional
notification and an opportunity for disapproval before troops or armed
Federal agents may be sent to polling places, to protect elections from
abuses of executive power and to reinstate the coverage formula for the
Voting Rights Act of 1965; and
Whereas section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment and section 2 of the Fifteenth
Amendment each expressly grant Congress the power to enforce the
guarantees of those amendments through appropriate legislation, and the
right to vote is preservative of all other rights: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) reaffirms its commitment to the full enforcement of the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution;
(2) condemns the deployment of troops, armed Federal
agents, or immigration enforcement personnel to or near polling
places for any purpose other than repelling an imminent armed
attack, as provided under existing law;
(3) calls on the Department of Homeland Security to state
clearly and in writing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement
will not conduct operations at or near polling places during
the 2026 elections or any future election;
(4) opposes passage of the Safeguard American Voter
Eligibility Act, whether as standalone legislation or attached
to unrelated legislation such as the National Defense
Authorization Act or a budget reconciliation bill, or any
legislation that would impose a documentary proof of
citizenship requirement for voter registration;
(5) opposes the collection or compilation by any Federal
agency of a national database of confidential voter
registration information;
(6) supports restoring Federal preclearance protections
eliminated by the Supreme Court's decisions in Shelby County v.
Holder, and section 2 protections weakened by the Supreme
Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais and Brnovich v.
Democratic National Committee;
(7) supports requiring States to provide public notice, in
a format accessible to voters with disabilities, of polling
place locations, accessibility, and the availability of
accessible voting machines, sufficiently in advance of an
election;
(8) opposes any effort by the executive branch to declare a
national emergency over elections, to federalize the
administration of elections, or to otherwise use emergency or
immigration enforcement authority to interfere with the free
exercise of the right to vote;
(9) calls on Members of the House of Representatives to
reject voter intimidation and voter suppression in all forms
and to work to ensure that every eligible voter, regardless of
race, national origin, or income, can cast a ballot free from
fear; and
(10) calls on the Speaker of the House to commit, in
writing, to promptly administering the oath of office to any
Member-elect, Delegate-elect, or Resident Commissioner-elect
upon their election, consistent with the constitutional
requirement that duly elected Representatives be seated.
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