Texas House passes GOP voting restrictions that Democrats had blocked for weeks by fleeing the state

“Speaker Phelan may not want to acknowledge that SB1 is rooted in a long, racist tradition of voter suppression in Texas,” Sarah Labowitz, policy and advocacy director with the American Civil Liberty Union of Texas, said in a statement. “But the racist impacts of the bill speak for themselves: limiting the way Texas’ most diverse counties conduct elections, opening up voters to intimidation by partisan poll watchers, and erecting unnecessary barriers to vote for communities that have long been targeted by voter suppression.”