[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3322-3323]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF BLOODY SUNDAY

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last Saturday marked the 50th anniversary 
of what has come to be known as Bloody

[[Page 3323]]

Sunday. In March of 1965, Congressman John Lewis, then a young man 
fresh out of college, and Rev. Hosea Williams led 600 brave civil 
rights activists across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL.
  These courageous men and women, and children marching with them, were 
marching in pursuit of the most fundamental right--the right 
preservative of all others--the right to vote. What they received that 
day, however, were brutal beatings from police batons as State troopers 
turned them back and chased them down.
  A few days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed the Nation 
and called on Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. Within months, 
the legislation was signed into law--guaranteeing that the fundamental 
right to vote would not be restricted through clever State and local 
schemes, such as poll taxes and literacy tests.
  I was proud to join Congressman Lewis on a trip to Selma about 10 
years ago for a ceremonial walk across the bridge to mark the 40th 
anniversary of Bloody Sunday. As we marched on a Sunday morning in the 
footsteps of the civil rights giants, we celebrated a bill that has 
often been called the most significant civil rights law ever passed by 
Congress. Little did we know that 8 years later, in 2013, the Supreme 
Court would strike down a major provision of that law.
  In Shelby County v. Holder, by a 5-to-4 vote, a divided Supreme Court 
struck down the provision of the Voting Rights Act that required 
certain jurisdictions to preclear changes to their voting laws with the 
Department of Justice. The decision effectively gutted the Voting 
Rights Act.
  In the aftermath of the Shelby County decision, several State 
legislatures pushed through discriminatory and onerous restrictions on 
voting that previously would have required Department of Justice 
clearance.
  We have heard disturbing stories of a 93-year-old veteran and a 
nearly 70-year-old doctor who were turned away from the polls in Texas 
because their IDs did not meet the specifications of an onerous new 
State law. We heard about Florida's faulty voter verification efforts 
that disproportionately flag Hispanic citizens for removal from the 
voter rolls. And we have heard how the elimination of out-of-precinct 
voting and cuts to early voting impacted minority voters in North 
Carolina.
  It is hard to believe that 50 years after Selma, we are watching 
State legislatures pass legislation restricting opportunities to vote 
in America. None of us want to subscribe or endorse voter fraud--not a 
person on either side of the aisle--but this goes far beyond it.
  As chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, I held 
hearings in Florida and Ohio, where they were enacting restrictive laws 
to limit opportunities to vote--limiting the time you can vote, 
requiring IDs.
  In each of those States, I called as my first witnesses elected 
officials of both political parties. I asked, in both States, the same 
question to the first panel of witnesses: What has happened in your 
State by way of voter fraud that has led you to restrict the 
opportunity to vote in your States of Ohio and Florida? The answer was: 
Nothing--nothing.
  Then we discussed how many people have actually been prosecuted for 
voter fraud that led to this tightening of the laws and limiting the 
opportunity to vote. In Ohio, the answer was: We think in the last 10 
years, a few people might have been prosecuted. This clearly was not a 
problem in need of a solution. This was clearly an effort made in these 
State legislatures to restrict the opportunity to vote for certain 
Americans. Why? If you believe in this country, if you believe in 
democracy, if you believe in the right to vote, why do so many State 
legislatures--under the guidance of a group called ALEC--why are they 
changing their laws to restrict the right to vote? Clearly it is 
because they want certain people to find it more difficult to vote.
  When I chaired this subcommittee and I had this series of hearings, 
we heard over and over again that these laws have a disproportionate 
negative impact on lower income individuals, minorities, youth, 
elderly, and other vulnerable populations.
  I wish that 50 years after Bloody Sunday, our society had reached a 
point where the protections of the Voting Rights Act were no longer 
necessary. But we have seen in State after State that we still need the 
protections of the law, or people--good American citizens--will be 
denied their opportunity to cast a vote in an election.
  So in order to truly honor the foot soldiers of Bloody Sunday, we 
have to do more than vote for congressional medals. We have to work 
together to pass the Voting Rights Amendment Act to ensure the Federal 
Government is once again able to fully protect the fundamental right to 
vote for all American citizens.
  The Voting Rights Amendment Act, which Senator Leahy, Senator Coons, 
and I plan to reintroduce soon, will undo the damage of the Shelby 
County decision. Our bill will restore the Voting Rights Act by 
updating the formula that determines which jurisdictions must preclear 
changes to their voting practices with the Justice Department.
  In 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act with an 
overwhelming bipartisan vote. The spirit of Bloody Sunday--the spirit 
of Selma, AL--was alive and well 9 years ago, when both political 
parties stood up and said: We are both going to endorse it. It is the 
right thing to do.
  Mr. President, 390 Members in the House out of 435 voted for it, and 
98 Senators--from both political parties--voted to reauthorize it, 9 
years ago. Congress, after all the hearings--21 of them--with more than 
90 witnesses testifying, produced a record that exceeded 15,000 pages, 
and the bill was solid in the law.
  We recognized then that despite the progress we have made in the 
years since that famous march, there still was unlawful and unfair 
discrimination against Americans who wanted to exercise their right to 
vote.
  The Supreme Court ignored our work, and in the Shelby County decision 
overturned a key section of this law. That is why we need to once again 
step up on a bipartisan basis to pass this Voting Rights Amendment Act.

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