blue bulletDoes the Voting Rights Act protect language minorities?
Yes. The Voting Rights Act makes it illegal to discriminate in voting based on someone’s membership in a language minority group. The idea behind the Voting Rights Act’s minority language provisions is to remove language as a barrier to political participation, and to prevent voting discrimination against people who speak minority languages. The Justice Department enforces these protections by bringing lawsuits in federal court, by sending federal observers to monitor elections, and by working with local jurisdictions to improve their minority language election procedures. Many jurisdictions with people of Hispanic, Native American, and Alaskan Native heritage are covered by Section 5 of the Act, according to the formula found in Section 4(f) of the statute (42 U.S.C. 1973b(f)), and must submit all their voting changes for preclearance just as other covered jurisdictions do. When we review voting changes from jurisdictions whose Section 5 coverage is for language minority voters, we lo
