WASHINGTON — House Democrats reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act on Wednesday.

Supported by the entire House Democratic Caucus, the bill would require states that have a history of voting rights violations to receive federal approval before changing their voting laws.

“Seemingly every day we see new efforts to roll back our hard-fought progress, efforts to whitewash our history and efforts to make it harder for Americans to vote,” Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., said at a press event announcing the bill’s reintroduction. “Without the protections of the Voting Rights Act, those efforts are going unchecked in state legislatures across this country.”

Sewell said state legislators proposed more than 300 bills in 2024 to make it harder for Americans to cast a ballot by closing polling locations, curbing early voting, ending vote-by-mail and imposing stricter voter identification requirements. More than 20 have been signed into law.

The reintroduction of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act comes days before the 60-year anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," when state troopers attacked civil rights marchers on the bridge connecting Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, leading to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Signed into law by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, the 1965 law prohibited the suppression of voting rights based on race.

In addition to ending the use of literacy tests and other practices that denied the vote to individuals based on race, the law required the federal preclearance of new state laws that affected voting.

The law was reauthorized five times with large bipartisan majorities, most recently in 2006 by then-President George W. Bush, a Republican. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional to require federal preclearance, allowing states to enact more restrictive voting laws.

House Democrats have introduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act every year since the Supreme Court decision.

Named for the late John R. Lewis, a civil rights icon who led the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 and served in the U.S. House from 1987 until his death in 2020, the legislation would restore many of the protections of the 60-year-old Voting Rights Act.

“While my Republican colleagues have abandoned that bipartisan tradition, this Congress provides a new opportunity for them to stand alongside us as we fight for the American people and the values that John Lewis fought so bravely and so tirelessly to advance,” Sewell said.