When the 19th Amendment, ratified on August 18, 1920, finally allowed women to vote, ACLU founder Crystal Eastman, an ardent suffragist, was not interested in a victory celebration. She wanted women to use their newly minted political power to promote true freedom and equality, regardless of sex. “Now We Can Begin,” she urged, in a still-renowned speech. 

But the adoption of the 19th Amendment did not actually enable all women to vote. Black women and other women of color still had to confront laws and practices designed to keep them from voting —despite the fact that the 15th Amendment, in 1870, had already prohibited the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. And today, 150 years after the 15th Amendment’s declaration of equal rights, racist voter suppression is still rampant.

It’s wonderful to celebrate the 19th Amendment’s centennial, but it’s not enough. We need to finish the job of the voting rights activists who fought for both the 15th and 19th Amendments.

Let People Vote

The Constitution says clearly that women and people of color have a legal right to vote. But theory is not practice. 

For many decades, the ACLU has been battling laws that outright disenfranchise some people — like people who are incarcerated and people with certain criminal convictions — or create insurmountable barriers for others, especially Black and Brown women and men, Native Americans, and people with disabilities. We’re currently working in 30 states to fight pernicious voter ID laws, illegal purges of voters from the voting rolls, and malicious limitations on voter registration, all of which tend to have an intentionally disproportionate and exclusionary impact on Black and Brown voters. 

Adding to this plague of voter suppression, COVID-19 is creating further barriers and unevenly affecting our electoral process.

COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease to which everyone is susceptible, and there is still no vaccine. Its symptoms vary — from the most severe to the least detectable — leaving many prospective voters anxious to use mail-in or drop-off ballots or at least be assured that conditions at their polling places will minimize their exposure to the virus.

No one should have to choose between their vote and their health, as voters in some states have already been forced to do. The Wisconsin state legislature, for example, refused to take the logical step of expanding absentee balloting for the state’s April election — despite the fact that a state-wide stay-at-home order was in effect. Determined voters waited in line for hours to vote in crowded polling places, especially in densely populated cities. In Milwaukee, only 5 of 180 polling places were open. In the days following the election, over 50 Milwaukee voters and poll workers tested positive for the virus. And turnout numbers from the city of Milwaukee showed a massive decrease, from over 167,000 voters in 2016 to just over 95,000 voters this year.

This is discriminatory voter suppression in a new guise. The population in Milwaukee is 40 percent Black, while the population of the state as a whole is 6 percent Black. Black and Brown communities are disproportionately impacted by the virus, and thus would have an additional reason to feel dissuaded from voting under the kind of conditions the Wisconsin legislature condoned. Wisconsin is a frightening harbinger of how unrepresentative the November election could be if we don’t act now to protect everyone’s right to vote.

Most states have agreed to make mail-in ballots and expanded early in-person options available to every voter, which could keep lines shorter and increase accessibility options for many. But some have not. It was only after extensive litigation that Alabama, for example, agreed to make mail-in-ballots available to all of their voters during the pandemic. Other states, like Texas, have persuaded their state courts to allow them to enforce in-person voting with only limited exceptions. 

Many states that do allow voting by mail nevertheless insist on maintaining requirements which, during a pandemic, can be daunting hurdles to voting from home, especially for people who live alone:  mandating that a mail-in ballot be signed by a live witness, or notarized, or accompanied by a specified kind of photo ID that could require an in-person trip to the DMV — or be hard to obtain if DMV offices are closed.

Requiring people to tolerate unequal levels of risk of infection in order to vote during a pandemic is a new, opportunistic form of the insidious voter suppression we’ve been battling all along.

What You Can Do

Crystal Eastman would be gratified to know that the ACLU has more than just begun: For 100 years, we’ve been honoring our founders through our work toward equality, now including ensuring that voting is safe, accessible, and inclusive in this perilous time. And now you can begin — or continue what you’ve already been doing, to realize the promise of both the 19thand 15th Amendments:    

• Ask your member of Congress to support mandating universal access to voting by mail and early voting, provide the necessary funds for states to implement these changes, and support the federal VoteSafe Act;
• Learn if you can vote by mail in your state and make a plan to vote;
• Work on voter registration or voter turnout initiatives; and
• Share information and action proposals with your social media and other communities.

And when you exercise your own right to vote, vote like your rights depend on it! They do.

Susan N. Herman, President, ACLU

Abortion is legal in Texas and across the United States, but that doesn’t stop anti-abortion politicians from doing whatever they can to interfere with access to reproductive healthcare. Local governments have added fuel to the fire by passing anti-abortion ordinances that confuse residents about their rights and increase the ever-present stigma around seeking abortion care.

That’s why, for the first time, reproductive rights, health, and justice groups in our state are joining forces to expand essential health care access for all Texans by creating the Texas Abortion Access Network. Join us for TAAN’s launch on Thursday, August 20 at 6 PM CT, to become a founding member of TAAN and hear about how you can get involved. 

In the last year alone, 13 cities in Texas have passed so-called “sanctuary cities for the unborn” ordinances. These ordinances attempt to ban abortion in those cities if Roe v. Wade is overturned, and some even attempt to ban contraception. At one point, many of these ordinances even declared abortion providers and other advocacy groups to be “criminal organizations.”

We sued and successfully pushed those cities to remove the most harmful parts of those ordinances — but those laws are just one example of the many ways Texas politicians have attacked reproductive freedom. For years, Texas politicians have piled restriction after restriction on abortion access. From enacting 2013’s House Bill 2, which led to the closure of half of all Texan abortion clinics, to banning abortions during the early COVID-19 pandemic, elected officials in Texas continually work to block essential healthcare.

But together, we are fighting back for the right to determine our own lives and destinies.

The Texas Abortion Access Network (TAAN) is a new collaboration between the ACLU of Texas, AFIYA Center, NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, Progress Texas, Texas Equal Access Fund, Texas Freedom Network, Jane’s Due Process, and Whole Woman’s Health Alliance. We’re building community among Texas residents who are fed up with attacks on their reproductive freedom. 

Through TAAN, we are building grassroots power across Texas. We will not only defend against further restrictions but also empower activists to dive into action and put proactive, protective laws on the books in their hometowns. We are building a diverse base of volunteers that represent every corner of the state and equipping them with the tools they need to be leaders in their communities. 
 
A key component of TAAN is the Texas Abortion Access Academy, an 8-week online training program led by abortion access experts. The academy will cover a comprehensive array of topics to build each person’s capacity to become an effective abortion rights advocate. We’re including a crash-course on the status of abortion in Texas, how to talk to others about abortion, background on reproductive justice, and how to advocate and organize for abortion access. At the end of the program, cohort members will have gained the skills to lobby their local government, have difficult conversations about abortion, and get others involved in the movement. 

Let’s be clear: Attacks on abortion care won’t stop Texans from needing, and seeking, abortion care. They’ll just ensure that the most vulnerable Texans have a much more difficult and costly experience accessing it. We’ve seen it again and again — restrictions to abortion care disproportionately harm Black and Brown people, people struggling to make ends meet, those who are already parenting, folks in rural areas, undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ folks, and young people.  

Without access to reproductive health care, our communities can’t thrive. And while abortion remains legal, the fact that the Supreme Court nearly allowed a Louisiana law— one identical to a Texas law they struck down just four years ago — to take effect shows that we can’t take the judicial system for granted. Our rights won’t be handed to us, we have to take them.

Blair Wallace, Policy and Advocacy Strategist, ACLU of Texas

For weeks, federal agents with the Department of Homeland Security laid siege to the city of Portland to suppress the voices of those demanding justice for Black lives. The militarized agents used sharpshooters to maim people, swept protesters away in unmarked cars, and brutally attacked journalists, legal observers, and medics with sonic weapons and tear gas. They didn’t spare moms, dads, veterans, nurses, or even the city’s mayor.
 
The agency’s lawlessness was so profound that a federal court in Portland issued a restraining order against the agency after the ACLU filed suit. Congress held numerous hearings. The agency’s inspector general opened an investigation. Even former leaders of the Department of Homeland Security decried its abuses. Richard Clarke, who served on the National Security Council for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, called for dismantling DHS. 
 
The administration’s effort to use its response to the protests in Portland as some twisted campaign prop miserably backfired, and the agents were forced to retreat. Now, recognizing that he’s in hot water, Chad Wolf, who was illegally appointed as head of DHS, is on a media tour in an attempt to rewrite history.

But the truth was caught on video for the world to see. No press interview, no op-ed, and no statement by any administration official can undo the fact that DHS agents beat a Navy veteran for simply asking them questions. They can’t hide the viral video of unmarked federal agents — later identified to be with DHS — hauling a protester off the streets of Portland into an unmarked vehicle. They can’t make us forget the sight of DHS agents firing tear gas at individuals simply exercising their right to protest, or beating and dragging off medics providing aid to an unconscious bystander. They also can’t erase the decades of abuse, civil rights violations, killings, and discriminatory surveillance of Black, Brown, and immigrant communities.
 
Wolf did get one fact right: “Courthouses uphold everyone’s rights.” The federal court in Portland did uphold the people’s rights when DHS brought its police state tactics there. It ordered the agency to stop arresting and attacking journalists and legal observers. But DHS didn’t comply with the court order — even after the court issued its restraining order, the agency continued to attack journalists and legal observers.
 
An agency claiming to defend the courthouse should, at a minimum, obey the orders coming out of it.
 
As we have for a century — much longer than DHS has been around — the ACLU will continue to unapologetically defend the Constitution from all those who undermine it. This includes the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is too powerful, too abusive, and too much of a threat to America’s democratic values. As ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero and former Bush administration official Richard Clarke put it, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Abdullah Hasan, Communications Strategist, ACLU