September 2021

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 1 on September 7, 2021, enacting sweeping voting restrictions including: banning 24-hour voting and drive-through voting (both used in Harris County, which has a large Black and Latino population); prohibiting distribution of unsolicited mail ballot applications; empowering partisan poll watchers; making it harder to assist voters with limited English; and adding ID requirements for mail ballots. Democrats twice fled the state to deny quorum and block the bill. After the third special session, it passed. Federal suits argued the provisions disproportionately impacted Black and Latino voters.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 1, enacting sweeping voting restrictions including: banning 24-hour voting and drive-through voting used in majority-Black and Latino Harris County; prohibiting distribution of unsolicited mail ballot applications; adding ID requirements for mail ballots. Democrats twice fled the state to deny quorum and block the bill before it passed in a third special session.

Bipartisan negotiations on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act collapsed in September 2021 after months of talks between Senators Cory Booker, Karen Bass, and Tim Scott. The central sticking point was qualified immunity — the doctrine that shields officers from civil rights suits. Republicans refused to eliminate it; Democrats refused to retain it. No federal police reform legislation has been enacted as of 2024, despite the largest protest movement in American history in 2020. Over 200 pieces of state legislation passed in the year after Floyd's death, with varied impact. The federal failure left policing reform to fragmented state and local action.