Voting Rights Act Reauthorization of 2006: 25-Year Extension Passes with Bipartisan Supermajority Before Conservative Legal Assault

President George W. Bush signed the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006, extending Section 5 preclearance requirements for 25 years with overwhelming bipartisan support. The House passed the bill 390-33 and the Senate 98-0, demonstrating that the VRA retained broad political legitimacy even as conservative legal activists prepared the judicial assault that would gut it seven years later.

The 2006 reauthorization renewed Section 5 preclearance, requiring jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing voting procedures. Congress compiled an extensive record documenting continued discrimination: the House Judiciary Committee held 12 hearings with over 90 witnesses, and Congress found that Section 5 blocked more than 700 discriminatory voting changes between 1982 and 2006. The Senate report detailed ongoing tactics including discriminatory redistricting, polling place relocations, and changes to election dates.

Representative James Sensenbrenner, the Republican Judiciary Committee chairman, led the reauthorization effort alongside civil rights veteran John Lewis. Their collaboration symbolized bipartisan commitment to voting rights that transcended the era’s partisan divisions. Sensenbrenner defended the coverage formula against Republican critics who called it outdated, arguing that ongoing discrimination justified continued federal oversight.

The legislation also extended Section 203 language minority protections and strengthened Section 5 by overturning the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Reno v. Bossier Parish, which had limited preclearance review. Congress explicitly stated its intent to restore the VRA’s full protective scope against judicial narrowing.

However, the overwhelming vote concealed brewing conservative opposition. Before and during reauthorization, conservative legal organizations including the Project on Fair Representation prepared litigation challenges. The coverage formula—based on data from the 1960s and 1970s—was increasingly vulnerable to claims it no longer reflected current conditions. Chief Justice John Roberts, who had opposed VRA renewal as a Reagan administration lawyer, now led a Court skeptical of federal oversight.

Just seven years later, in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the same Supreme Court that had allowed Congress to compile this extensive record struck down the coverage formula as unconstitutional. Roberts’s majority opinion dismissed Congress’s documented findings, declaring that “things have changed dramatically” and that preclearance was no longer justified. The 98-0 Senate vote became a footnote as judicial activism accomplished what democratic opposition could not.