NEW YORK, CMC – The New York State Senate has passed voting rights legislation that would enable Haitian Creole speakers to be eligible for language assistance.
The measure, sponsored by Caribbean-American New York State Democratic Senator Zellnor Myrie, also includes New Yorkers of Middle Eastern and North African heritage.
Myrie, whose grandmother hailed from Jamaica, authored the 2022 John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York.
He said that the law “contains the strongest voter protections of any state law in the country,” telling the Media Corporation (CMC) that, while voting rights are under attack across America, “New York is fighting back.
“This important bill builds on New York’s landmark Voting Rights Act (NYVRA) by adding new protections for speakers of Haitian Creole and New Yorkers of Middle Eastern and North African descent,” said the representative for the 20th Senate District in Central Brooklyn, New York.
“I’m grateful to my Senate colleagues for continuing to step up and expand voting rights in New York,” added Myrie, noting that New York’s Voting Rights Act creates protected classes of voters who are eligible to challenge instances of voter suppression or dilution in court.
He said that the New York Court of Appeals has upheld the NYVRA and was most recently used by Latino voters in the Town of Newburgh, Upstate New York, to force procedural changes that will ensure the Town Board “more fairly reflect the voices of previously underrepresented voters”.
Myrie said over 170,000 speakers of Haitian Creole live in New York State, and that the bill now moves to the New York State Assembly, where it is sponsored by Haitian-American Assembly Member Clyde Vanel, Democrat of Queens, New York.
Passage of Myrie’s Haitian Creole voter protections in the New York State Senate comes as Caribbean-American Democratic Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and other immigration advocates on Wednesday strongly condemned a ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) on the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965.
In a 6-3 ruling, SCOTUS struck down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana, holding that, while the Voting Rights Act could justify race-based redistricting, it could do so only if plaintiffs can show intentional racial discrimination in the drawing of districts.
The implications of this ruling include gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and allowing states to redraw their congressional district maps to eliminate majority-Black and brown districts previously protected by the VRA, putting them at risk.
“With the stroke of a pen, this rogue, unaccountable Court has effectively signed the death certificate of the Voting Rights Act, undoing decades of Black progress,” Clarke, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, who represents the 9th Congressional District in Brooklyn, New York, told CMC.
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