Opinion: 50 Years Ago, a Voting Rights Milestone Empowered Millions. Let’s Keep It That Way

August marks two important anniversaries in the fight for voting rights: 60 years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and 50 years since a bipartisan majority in Congress renewed the law, and added one of the Act’s most transformative expansions—Section 203, which supports language services for voters with limited English.

While the broader Voting Rights Act is rightly celebrated for knocking down barriers to the ballot box, especially for Black Americans, Section 203 deserves its own recognition as a civil rights achievement that expanded access to the vote for millions of Latino and Asian American immigrant voters, as well as for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives who were finally able to get translated election materials and assistance in their own languages.

This landmark provision was added in 1975 in response to systemic discrimination faced by Mexican American voters. In places like Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, 90 percent of the population spoke only Spanish, yet no translated election materials were available.

In Los Angeles, where more than a million Mexican-Americans lived, no Mexican-Americans served on the city council or represented the local community in the California legislature. A key factor: English-only ballots and voter information served as a de facto literacy test, shutting voters out of the democratic process.

The great Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas, a forceful champion for the reform, decried the exclusion of Latinos. “Nearly all the forms of discriminatory voting practices suffered by Blacks in the South are being suffered by Mexican Americans in the Southwest,” she observed.

Section 203 has delivered on the promise of a more inclusive democracy. By requiring states and local jurisdictions with significant language minority populations to provide translated ballots, bilingual poll workers, and other language assistance to voters, the law has allowed for millions of Americans, including naturalized citizens, to participate where they were once discriminated against and systematically excluded.

Today, more than 20 million eligible Latino voters live in jurisdictions covered by Section 203. That includes more than four million Latinos in Texas and over seven million in California. Across the country, language access has boosted participation and helped ensure that voting is not a privilege reserved for English speakers alone.

Yet even as public support for immigration reaches historic highs—with 79 percent of Americans saying immigrants are good for the country—access to voting and elections for immigrants and language minorities is under threat.

The White House recently issued an executive order declaring English the official language of the U.S., with the aim of denying citizens access to translated government information. Meanwhile, in Congress and state legislatures, lawmakers are pushing new proof-of-citizenship voting requirements, clearly aimed at intimidating and suppressing participation by immigrant and Latino voters.

These efforts fly in the face of American values. They also defy the bipartisan, civic-minded spirit that brought us Section 203 in the first place.

That’s why we must recommit ourselves to defending and expanding this vital law.

As a first step, that means improving, not weakening, enforcement of Section 203 and the rest of the Voting Rights Act. It is outrageous that leaders in Washington, D.C. have set out to gut the Justice Department division that enforces the nation’s voting rights laws. This cannot stand.

At the moment, major federal advancements like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act face long odds. But at the state level, lawmakers can take their own steps to protect and expand access to elections for language minorities. For instance, in May, Colorado enacted a new state Voting Rights Act that expands language access and strengthens other election protections. This is especially critical as the U.S. Supreme Court, the White House, and Congress are rolling back federal protections.

In addition to supporting strong policies on voting, it’s important to support grassroots organizations that are engaging immigrant communities in our democracy, advocating for stronger language services, and helping voters feel seen and supported—regardless of the language they speak. At the Latino Community Foundation, we’re honored to partner with groups like Radio Bilingue in California’s Central Valley, which has leveraged their public programming to provide culturally rooted, bilingual information on voting.

This work is critical work to ensure a healthy and vigorous democracy. At a time of bitter partisanship and misinformation about immigrants and immigrant voters, let’s mark the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and the 50th anniversary of its renewal and expansion by reaffirming our commitment to the idea that government has a role and a responsibility to make voting easier and more accessible for everyone.

Every day in communities across our nation, immigrants are contributing to our economy, our culture, and our public life in immeasurable ways. Let’s do everything we can to make sure they can also contribute their voice—no matter what language they speak to help chart a brighter future for our nation.

(*) Julián Castro is the CEO of the Latino Community Foundation, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama, and former Mayor of San Antonio.

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