Connecticut’s VRA: Filling in the Gaps Left by Shelby, and More
October 18, 2024
By: Brooks Alderman
In 1965, the United States Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA); this legislation contained many provisions designed to protect the right vote. One of the most important sections of the law was Section 5, which prohibited covered jurisdictions from changing their election laws without those changes first being “precleared” by the US Attorney General or the US District Court for the District of Columbia to ensure that the changes were not discriminatory. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the key provisions of this law, Section 4(b), which outlined the criteria to determine which jurisdictions should be covered by Section 5; this ruling had the impact of rendering section 5 as ineffective. Following Shelby and the end of preclearance, many states have passed laws that can restrict voting access, such as strict voter ID laws, stringent absentee voting processes, and difficult voter registration requirements. However, other states have moved in the opposite direction.
In 2023, the Connecticut legislature passed the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of Connecticut, and it was signed into law by Governor Lamont on June 12 of that year. Similar to the federal VRA, Connecticut’s VRA also has a preclearance requirement for covered jurisdictions; the statute sets out five criteria that make a jurisdiction “covered:”
- A) a municipality that has been subject to a court order for a violation of federal or state voting rights laws in the last twenty-five years;
- B) a municipality that has failed to provide required data under the Act within the last three years;
- C) a municipality that isn’t a school district, contains at least 1,000 or at least 10% of eligible electors of a protected class, and where at any point in the last ten years, the arrest rate of any protected class exceeds the municipality’s average by at least 20%; and
- D) a municipality that has at least 1,000 or at least 10% eligible electors of any protected class, and where at any point in the last ten years, the voter participation rate of a protected class in local elections was at least 10% lower than the municipality’s average participation rate; or
- E) beginning on Jan 1, 2034, a municipality that was found in the previous ten years to have implemented a policy needing preclearance without first getting the necessary preclearance
This law mirrors the federal Voting Rights Act in that any covered jurisdiction cannot make a change to their election policies without first having those changes approved by CT’s Secretary State or a superior court. If the preclearing authority finds that a change to a regulation, policy, etc. would have the impact of hindering the voting ability of members of a protected class, then it must deny preclearance; the jurisdiction has the burden of proof in the determination.
Additionally, the CT VRA requires that certain covered municipalities must follow a Language-Related Assistance Requirement; these criteria are broader than those of the federal VRA, and consist of:
- A percentage higher than 2%, or a number greater than 4,000, of voting-age citizens in the municipality who speak a shared language other than English and are individuals with limited English proficiency;
- If any part of a Native American reservation is within a municipality, a percentage greater than 2% of the Native American voting-age population within the municipality who speak a shared language other than English and are individuals with limited English proficiency.
These criteria have the impact of expanding the number of covered municipalities for Language-Related Assistance Requirements from ten to thirty-three. Separately, the Act ha provisions against voter intimidation, deception, or obstruction.
While many states took advantage of the Shelby holding to restrict access to the vote, others have decided to go in the opposite direction by enshrining into state law the protections that Americans throughout the country relied on until 2013; Connecticut is a strong example of a state that not only has filled in the gaps, but has expanded upon them.