; Whereas, in 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ( 52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq. ) to protect the right of Black Americans and other traditionally disenfranchised groups to vote, among other reasons; Whereas, in 2013, in the landmark case of Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ( 52 U.S.C. 10303 ), dismantling the preclearance formula provision in that Act that protected voters in States and localities that historically have suppressed the right of minorities to vote; Whereas, since the invalidation of the preclearance formula provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ( 52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq. ), gerrymandered districts in many States have gone unchallenged and have become less likely to be invalidated by the courts; Whereas gerrymandered districts in many States have been found to have a discriminatory impact on traditionally disenfranchised minorities through tactics that include cracking , diluting the voting power of minorities across many districts, and packing , concentrating the power of minority voters into 1 district to reduce their voting power in other districts; Whereas the courts have found the congressional and, in some cases, State legislative district maps, in Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Alabama, and Louisiana to be gerrymandered districts that were created to favor some groups over others; Whereas these restrictive voting laws encompass cutbacks in early voting, voter roll purges, placement of faulty equipment in minority communities, requirement of photo identification, and the elimination of same-day registration; Whereas these policies could outright disenfranchise or make voting much more difficult for more than 80,000,000 minority, elderly, poor, and disabled voters, among other groups