Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are pressing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to bolster its efforts to protect voting rights in the U.S., telling the nation’s chief law enforcement officer “no lawsuit is too trivial.”
A group of 44 House lawmakers reportedly penned a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday calling on the DOJ to “enforce every applicable law to ensure all citizens can vote.”
“No lawsuit is too trivial when it comes to the voting rights of citizens,” the House members wrote.
The lawmakers in their letter also slammed “unabashedly racist and partisan attacks on our nation’s democratic principles,” writing that such assaults “must be forcefully condemned and expeditiously reversed.”
“We write to urge you to leverage the full might of the Department of Justice to defend the sacred right to vote for all Americans,” they added.
The DOJ has sued the states of Georgia and Texas over their controversial laws that imposed restrictive measures on voting access.
The lawmakers on Monday wrote that Black individuals have been “disproportionately targeted for disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, voter purges, and other forms of voter suppression, vote dilution, and election subversion,” arguing that the “campaign to oppress Black voters is rooted in white supremacy and serves to further institutionalize the legacy of slavery.”
Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), James Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) drafted and spearheaded the letter, which was also signed by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), among others.
President Biden and congressional Democrats for months have been working to reform voting rights on the federal level, though their attempts have so far been fruitless. Senate Republicans blocked the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and Freedom to Vote Act last year after both bills passed in the House.
Amid the GOP opposition, Democrats decided to go at it alone, launching a bid to nix the legislative filibuster in an effort to pass voting rights reform with a simple majority vote.
But Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) said they supported the Senate rule and would not change it for voting rights, serving a crushing blow to Democrats and their fight for election reform since all Democrats are needed to change rules in the evenly split Senate.
Democrats have also claimed that Republican legislators in states across the country have sought to use their majorities to draw congressional district lines that dampen the strength of Black and other minority voters and bolster the influence of white members of the electorate, Reuters noted, adding that dozens of lawsuits have been filed against the new electoral maps.
The lawmakers in Tuesday’s letter called on the DOJ to be creative, relentless and unapologetic in its “commitment to do whatever it takes to ensure that every American has their vote counted no matter how they look or where they live.”
“We recommend that you act with urgency to overpower and outpace attempts to diminish the will of voters,” they added.
The group emphasized that “to ensure the sanctity of the electoral process, it is necessary to move swiftly in litigating heinous laws designed to suppress voter turnout and invalidate election outcomes.”
“Confidence in elections is vital to maintaining a healthy democracy,” they added.
Updated 2:46 p.m.