What legal and electoral changes since 2013 have most affected the Voting Rights Act’s reach and how have courts responded?

1. Shelby County’s cut: what changed legally and why it mattered

In Shelby County v. Holder the Court held the Section 4(b) coverage formula unconstitutional because it relied on decades-old data, thereby nullifying the preclearance engine of Section 5 and leaving jurisdictions free to implement voting changes without advance federal approval; the decision was 5–4 and did not strike down Section 5 itself, but rendered it inoperable absent a new congressional formula ^{[1] [4] [3]}.

2. The legislative vacuum: Congress debated but did not restore preclearance

In the decade after Shelby, multiple bills — most prominently the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — were introduced to craft a modern coverage formula and expand protections, but none passed, leaving the statutory gap intact and Congress the ostensible remedy that never arrived ^{[5] [3] [6]}.

3. A wave of state voting changes and the empirical picture

Researchers and advocates report that nearly a hundred restrictive laws were enacted across states since 2013 — including voter ID rules, cuts to early voting, polling-place closures, limits on registration practices, and elimination of same-day or Sunday voting in multiple jurisdictions — with many measures appearing in states that previously would have been subject to preclearance ^{[2] [1] [7]}.

4. Courts as the front line: Section 2 litigation and shifting outcomes

With preclearance gone, challengers turned to Section 2, which outlaws racial discrimination in voting, but success rates have fallen: the Gingles framework still governs Section 2 claims yet lower-court victories are less frequent than in earlier decades and appellate decisions have at times narrowed remedies, producing a mixed and more litigation-intensive path for plaintiffs ^[8].

5. Lower courts block some laws; some judges allow others — variability and precedent erosion

Federal district and appellate courts have both struck down discriminatory statutes (for example, courts blocked strict voter-ID or targeted polling changes soon after Shelby), but other courts have upheld restrictions or applied more limited readings of the VRA; commentators and the Justice Department note a pattern of decisions that, cumulatively, have weakened protections and increased the burden on plaintiffs to prove discrimination ^{[2] [9] [7]}.

6. The Supreme Court’s recent posture and the risk to Section 2

Beyond Shelby, advocacy groups warn that a conservative Supreme Court majority has issued rulings that further constrain VRA enforcement, and cases that revisit Section 2’s scope have raised the prospect that the Court could curtail the statute’s reach even more — a dynamic that has prompted urgent calls from civil‑rights organizations and the Brennan Center for Congress to act ^{[10] [6] [8]}.

7. The political and institutional context: motives, consequences, and unresolved questions

The pattern since 2013 shows partisan incentives at play — state lawmakers moved quickly to pass laws that had been blocked pre-Shelby and research links some of the new measures to widening racial turnout gaps — but the long-term picture remains contested because measuring discriminatory intent and impact is legally complex and because Congress remains the linchpin for restoring preclearance if it chooses to legislate ^{[2] [9] [11]}.

8. Bottom line: a weakened VRA, a fractured remedy system, and litigation as the default response

The most consequential changes since 2013 are the judicial removal of preclearance, the legislative failure to replace the coverage formula, and the torrent of state voting rules that followed — outcomes that shifted the VRA from a proactive federal guardrail to a reactive, case‑by‑case judicial remedy with inconsistent protection across jurisdictions ^{[1] [3] [2]}.