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In the last decade, the US Supreme Court has severely weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was widely agreed to be the most influential civil rights law in our history.  

This term, the Court considers Section 2 in Merrill v. Milligan (now Allen v. Milligan). It threatens to weaken a well-established precedent lower courts have used for decades to evaluate redistricting plans alleged to be racially discriminatory.

This blog explores the history of Section 2 and its impact on discriminatory redistricting plans, explains the dispute in Milligan, and previews potential next steps to protect voting rights. 

The League of Women Voters and Fair Elections Center released the following statements after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the Moore v. Harper case.

This profile was originally published by The Miami Student.

LWVUS submitted public comments to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the proposed Healthy People 2030 objectives. The League articulated why the objective to increase the proportion of the voting-age citizens who vote as a social determinant of health should be updated from a research objective to a core objective.

In June 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson — the first Black woman to serve on the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) — was sworn in as an associate justice. Justice Jackson is the first former public defender to serve on the Court. 

In the more than two centuries of the Court, no justice has come to the bench with a public defender’s experience, representing those charged with crimes who could not afford an attorney. 

As an official representative of the national League of Women Voters, Shiva Rajbhandari talked to Boise State Public Radio about the COP27 Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

(COCHISE, ARIZ.) - The Board of Supervisors in Cochise County, Arizona, voted on Monday to delay certifying this year's midterm election results, a clear violation of state law. The action jeopardizes the votes of tens of thousands of Arizonans and undermines the integrity of our democratic system, according to an amicus brief filed Wednesday by the League of Women Voters of Arizona, ACLU of Arizona, Arizona Democracy Resource Center, and Arizona Center for Empowerment. The groups are represented by Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, and the law firms Latham & Watkins LLP and Spencer Fane in support of the plaintiffs in two cases, Hobbs v. Crosby et al., and Arizona Alliance of Retired Americans, Inc. et al. v. Crosby et al.

Naelyn Pike is a 23-year-old Chiricahua Apache. As a lifelong fighter, she continues to follow in her grandfather’s — the Apache Stronghold's founder — footsteps in protecting Apache's holy and sacred sites and Indigenous rights. 

At the age of 13, Pike was one of the youngest people to ever testify before Congress when she spoke out against mining at Oak Flat, an Apache sacred site. Today, she continues to fight for environmental sustainability and Indigenous rights at the local, state, and national levels, battling corporations and political leaders through Indigenous spirituality. She firmly believes that the youth today give us hope for a better world for future generations. 

This story was originally published by TAPinto.

Annette Scott was recognized for her work with former inmates

This opinion was originally published by YubaNet.com

An election may be a milestone, but it is not the journey. An election is an opportunity to check in with each other about the course of our country and the principles of our leaders. It is a conversation of sorts, a reminder to the people we have put in power about who they serve, inform them about what we believe, and tell them which direction we want to go.