Victims and advocates deserve a right to fight through the Voting Rights Act

In his final essay, the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) wrote, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.” American democracy is tenuous without the enforcement of longstanding and hard-won protections that allow everyday citizens and their advocates to act when the government can’t or won’t. 

A recent 2-1 ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, however, says that private litigants no longer have the right to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,...