[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1542 Introduced in House (IH)]
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119th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 1542
Designating September 2026 as ``National Voting Rights Month''.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
September 15, 2026
Mr. Veasey (for himself, Ms. DelBene, Ms. Johnson of Texas, Ms. Clarke
of New York, Mr. Olszewski, Mr. Tonko, Ms. Elfreth, Ms. Simon, Mr.
Horsford, Ms. Norton, Mr. Moulton, Mr. Carson, Mr. Mullin, Mrs.
Dingell, Mr. Jackson of Illinois, Mr. Correa, Ms. Kamlager-Dove, Mr.
McGovern, Ms. Chu, Mr. Costa, Ms. Castor of Florida, Ms. Moore of
Wisconsin, Mr. Doggett, Mrs. Grijalva, Ms. Pettersen, Mr. Larsen of
Washington, Mr. Scott of Virginia, Ms. Davids of Kansas, Ms. Meng, Ms.
Craig, Ms. Tlaib, and Ms. Pou) submitted the following resolution;
which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition
to the Committees on House Administration, Oversight and Government
Reform, and Education and Workforce, 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
Designating September 2026 as ``National Voting Rights Month''.
Whereas voting is 1 of the single most important rights that can be exercised in
a democracy;
Whereas, over the course of history, various voter suppression laws in the
United States have hindered, and even prohibited, certain individuals
and groups from exercising the right to vote;
Whereas, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, Native Americans and people
who were born to United States citizens abroad, people who spoke a
language other than English, and people who were formerly subjected to
slavery were denied full citizenship and prevented from voting by
English literacy tests;
Whereas, since the 1870s, minority groups such as Black Americans in the South
have suffered from the oppressive effects of Jim Crow laws that were
designed to prevent political, economic, and social mobility;
Whereas Black Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and other
underrepresented voters were subject to violence, poll taxes, literacy
tests, all-White primaries, property ownership tests, and grandfather
clauses that were designed to suppress the right of those
underrepresented individuals to vote;
Whereas, as of 2024, 4,000,000 people in the United States were disenfranchised
from voting because of a felony conviction, including 1 in 16 Black
adults, due to the shameful entanglement of racial injustice in the
criminal legal system and voting access in the United States;
Whereas members of the aforementioned groups and others are currently, in some
cases, subject to intimidation, voter roll purges, and financial
barriers that act effectively as modern-day poll taxes;
Whereas, in 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301
et seq.) to protect the right of Black Americans and other traditionally
disenfranchised groups to vote, among other reasons;
Whereas, in 2013, in the landmark case of Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529
(2013), the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated section 4 of
the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10303), dismantling the
preclearance formula provision in that Act that protected voters in
States and localities that historically have suppressed the right of
minorities to vote;
Whereas, since the invalidation of the preclearance formula provision of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.), gerrymandered
districts in many States have gone unchallenged and have become less
likely to be invalidated by the courts;
Whereas gerrymandered districts in many States have been found to have a
discriminatory impact on traditionally disenfranchised minorities
through tactics that include ``cracking'', diluting the voting power of
minorities across many districts, and ``packing'', concentrating the
power of minority voters into 1 district to reduce their voting power in
other districts;
Whereas some States have implemented new voting restrictions that make it more
difficult to vote, including cutbacks in early voting, voter roll
purges, placement of faulty equipment in minority communities,
requirement of photo identification, and the elimination of same-day
registration;
Whereas these policies could outright disenfranchise or make voting much more
difficult for more than 80,000,000 minority, elderly, poor, and disabled
voters, among other groups;
Whereas, in 2016, discriminatory laws in North Carolina, Wisconsin, North
Dakota, and Texas were ruled to violate the rights of voters and were
overturned by the courts;
Whereas the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Shelby County
v. Holder calls on Congress to update the formula in the Voting Rights
Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.);
Whereas, on April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States, in Louisiana
v. Callais, 608 U.S. ___ (2026), significantly narrowed section 2 of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301), holding that Louisiana
engaged in an unconstitutional racial gerrymander when it created a
second majority-Black congressional district to comply with section 2
and requiring future challengers to show that a State intentionally
discriminated against minority voters, a far higher bar than courts had
previously required;
Whereas Justice Kagan warned in her dissent in Louisiana v. Callais that the
decision renders section 2 ``all but a dead letter'' as a tool for
protecting minority voters from vote dilution;
Whereas, beginning in 2025 and continuing into 2026, legislatures and
commissions in States including Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio,
Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, and Louisiana have enacted new
congressional maps mid-decade, outside the normal post-census
redistricting cycle;
Whereas these maps have specifically targeted districts held by Black and other
minority Members of Congress;
Whereas these efforts, emboldened by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the
United States in Shelby County v. Holder and Louisiana v. Callais, face
fewer legal checks against racial vote dilution than at any point since
the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.),
underscoring the urgent need for Congress to restore and strengthen its
protections;
Whereas Congress must work to combat any attempts to dismantle or underfund the
United States Postal Service or obstruct the passage of the mail as
blatant tactics of voter suppression and election interference;
Whereas the Trump Administration has repeatedly attempted to restrict voter
registration and access to the ballot, including vote-by-mail, for
eligible citizens of the United States;
Whereas the Department of Justice has launched unprecedented lawsuits against at
least 30 States and the District of Columbia to force them to turn over
their voter registration lists and Federal courts have repeatedly
dismissed these Department of Justice lawsuits as meritless;
Whereas there is much more work to be done to ensure all citizens of the United
States have the right to vote through free, fair, and accessible
elections, and Congress must exercise its constitutional authority to
protect the right to vote;
Whereas National Voter Registration Day in 2026 is Tuesday, September 15; and
Whereas September 2026 would be an appropriate month--
(1) to designate as ``National Voting Rights Month''; and
(2) to ensure that, through the registration of voters and awareness of
elections, the democracy of the United States includes all citizens of the
United States: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) designates ``National Voting Rights Month'';
(2) encourages all people in the United States to uphold
the right of every citizen to exercise the sacred and
fundamental right to vote;
(3) encourages Congress to pass--
(A) the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
of 2025 (S. 2523, H. R. 14, 119th Congress), to
strengthen protections for voters by restoring and
modernizing key protections in the Voting Rights Act of
1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.) to prevent
discriminatory gerrymandering and to ensure minority
voting rights are safeguarded; and
(B) other voting rights legislation that seeks to
advance voting rights and protect elections in the
United States;
(4) encourages Congress to oppose the Safeguard American
Voter Eligibility Act (S. 3752, H. R. 7296, 119th Congress),
which could block millions of citizens of the United States
from casting their vote;
(5) recommends that public schools and universities in the
United States develop an academic curriculum that educates
students about--
(A) the importance of voting, how to register to
vote, where to vote, and the different forms of voting;
(B) the history of voter suppression in the United
States before and after passage of the Voting Rights
Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.); and
(C) current measures that have been taken to
restrict the vote;
(6) expresses appreciation for the United States Postal
Service having issued a special Representative John R. Lewis
stamp on September 19, 2023--
(A) to honor the life and legacy of Representative
John R. Lewis in supporting voting rights; and
(B) to remind people in the United States that
ordinary citizens risked their lives, marched, and
participated in the great democracy of the United
States so that all citizens would have the fundamental
right to vote; and
(7) invites Congress to allocate the requisite funds for
public service announcements on television, radio, newspapers,
magazines, social media, billboards, buses, and other forms of
media--
(A) to remind people in the United States when
elections are being held;
(B) to share important registration deadlines; and
(C) to urge people to get out and vote.
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