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...... While the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not prohibit the use of poll taxes, it did direct the Attorney General to challenge the use of those taxes. The Attorney General did so, and on Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), the Supreme Court held Virginia's poll tax to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. Between 1965 and 1969 the Supreme Court also issued several key decisions upholding the constitutionality of Section 5 and affirming the broad range of voting practices that required Section 5 review (USDOJ, 2008). In this way, the Supreme Court demonstrated support for the Act, showing that all three branches of the government were committed to voting equality. Moreover, Congress responded to the Supreme Courts broad support for the Act by extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 1970 and 1975. In response to testimony that Hispanic, Asian, and Native American citizens had experienced significant voting discrimination, the 1975 amendments added protections from voting discrimination for language minority citizens (USDOJ, 2008). Throughout the 1970s, claims aimed at ending racially-discriminatory gerrymandering were successful, though that largely came to a halt in the 1980s, after the Supreme Court determined that racially

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