Rhode Island Current: June 9th, 2026 by Christopher Shea
Comments from a special assistant attorney general in the Rhode Island Office of Attorney General are shown on a marked up copy of the Rhode Island Voting Rights Act. (Photo by Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)
Over 100 progressive and good government advocates struck when the political iron was hot when they rallied at the Rhode Island State House on March 31 to urge the General Assembly to pass legislation to codify federal protections against voter suppression into state law.
The rally was held a week after the introduction of the Rhode Island Voting Rights Act, which sought to protect the state’s minority voters against barriers to the ballot box such as suppression and racial gerrymandering. The legislation was sponsored by Senate President Valarie Lawson and new House Majority Leader Katherine Kazarian, both East Providence Democrats.
At the time, President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans were pushing hard for the U.S. Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, which would have required voters to offer documents such as a birth certificate or passport in order to prove their citizenship when registering. The U.S. House had passed the bill in February. Last week, the U.S. Senate rejected the SAVE America Act from being included into an immigration-focused spending bill.
Now as the General Assembly closes out its 2026 session this week, the Rhode Island Voting Rights Act is going nowhere.
Advocates say they were blindsided by the General Assembly’s decision against bringing bills that were considered nonpartisan to the floor for a vote.
“We had every person in the State House telling us this was going to happen,” Jocelyn Foye, director and co-founder of the Womxn Project, said in an interview. “We really thought that we had something special and could have something done in the first year.”
On Monday Lawson, House Speaker Christopher Blazejewski and Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore issued a joint statement that the bills would not be voted on before the end of the 2026 session, which is expected to wrap up Thursday.
“From the beginning, we have all understood the importance of passing a strong Rhode Island Voting Rights Act,” they said. “But we also understand that as the federal administration continues to work to make it more difficult to access the ballot box, we have to do it right.”
Lawson, Blazejewski, and Amore said more work on the legislation was needed to address several concerns as the legislation was being vetted by at the committee level.
“We want to be clear that no one concern brought us to this point,” they said. “It is imperative that we enact as strong, enforceable, and defensible a bill as possible. With those priorities in mind, we recognize there is more work to do.”
Advocates say those concerns involved clarifying technical language about attorney fees, court remedies, decades-old Supreme Court precedents and voter protections.
But voter protections are still needed, they say, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 30 decision to gut a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, which has opened the door for more redistricting across the country.
“The Supreme Court really put the nail in the federal Voting Rights Act,” John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, said in an interview. “In Rhode Island, the only body that can step up and protect the right to vote for communities of color is going to be the General Assembly.”
If enacted, the Rhode Island Voting Rights Act would explicitly prohibit voting discrimination based on religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, age, ancestry, or marital status. It would also bar voter suppression practices and require language assistance for voters with limited English proficiency.
– John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island
Shahidah Ali, political action committee chair for the Rhode Island Coalition of Black Women, said while the state has plenty of election protections, they could always change.
“Southern states moved quickly to gerrymander,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “Just because we’re in the North doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen here.”
Ali said she was very disappointed by the Democrat-led General Assembly for holding on the bill for another year.
“They seemed like they were on board,” she said. “I don’t really know what was said behind closed doors.”
The head of the state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has a theory on what killed the bill: edits made by Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office that were sent to lawmakers at the start of June.
Lawson, Blazejewski, and Amore’s joint statement noted they requested guidance from Neronha, whose office would handle enforcement and defend the legislation from any court challenge.
Most comments from the AG’s office were minor, sticking to clarifying some of the definitions within the bill. But some of the suggested tweaks raised alarms from Steven Brown, executive director of ACLU of Rhode Island.
Brown told Rhode Island Current he was particularly concerned about a comment involving attorney fee awards.
The original bills would allow individuals, advocacy groups and the attorney general to legally challenge voting practices they argue suppress voter participation or diminish the electoral influence of certain groups. But only plaintiffs could recover fees if they prevailed.
Neronha’s office commented that the usual rule is that each side bears their own costs.
“I can’t think of a better way to discourage people from trying to vindicate their rights,” Brown said.
The AG’s office also commented that the original voter suppression provisions were too broad and could expose governments to lawsuits over policies that merely might affect voting access, Brown said.
“It should be sufficiently clear what the political subdivision has to consider and avoid before acting, such as whether its proposed ordinance will deny individuals access to [the] right to vote on account of their protected status,” the comment states.
But intent isn’t so easy to prove, Brown argues.
“Some of the worst impacts are the results of policies that on their face might be neutral, but have a very severe discriminatory impact,” Brown said.
Neronha posted to X Monday evening saying Brown “has no idea what he is talking about. Remember: the man has no law degree,” he posted. “He has never argued in court. Not once.”
“I’ll let his tweets speak for themselves,” Brown responded Tuesday.
Still, Neronha’s own letter to Common Cause stated that whether to pass a Rhode Island Voting Rights Act in whatever form is “of course, a matter for the General Assembly to decide.”
“No one should view our comments as even a suggestion that I do not support the passage of a Rhode Island Voting Rights Act, even in the form currently drafted,” he wrote.
While disappointed, advocates say they will continue to ensure the legislation gets passed before the 2028 elections.
“Our organization is not going to give up on this,” Foye said.
