{
  "id": 1151539,
  "title": "The partisan divide over civil rights legislation widened abruptly in the 1990s and 2010s",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/16/the-partisan-divide-over-civil-rights-legislation-widened-abruptly-in",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-08-16T00:00:54.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "PsyPost",
    "slug": "psypost",
    "url": "https://www.psypost.org/the-partisan-divide-over-civil-rights-legislation-widened-abruptly-in-the-1990s-and-2010s/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The partisan divide over civil rights legislation in the United States has grown significantly in recent decades, particularly during the 1990s and 2010s, according to a new study published in Nature Communications. This study, conducted by researchers Joshua Conrad Jackson, Yuanze Liu, and Nour Kteily, analyzed 202,775 pieces of legislation sponsored by the US House of Representatives from 1973 to 2022. The authors found that the support for civil rights legislation, which is a key way the American democratic system formalizes social justice, became increasingly polarized along party lines during this period. This shift appears to be driven by a surge in bills sponsored by racial minority Democrats.\n\nThe research team used a combination of human expert tags and a computerized language model to evaluate whether a bill genuinely supported civil rights. They identified a marked increase in civil rights legislation around the year 2014, which coincided with a rapid surge in the percentage of civil rights bills relative to all legislation. This surge was particularly evident in the sponsorship by racial minority Democrats, whose share of civil rights legislation more than doubled from 6.12% in the 2007 congressional cycle to 13.70% in the 2019 cycle.\n\nIn contrast, the percentage of civil rights legislation sponsored by White Republicans did not show a statistically significant increase. The study also revealed that Democrats were more likely than Republicans to sponsor bills supporting various social groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and women. The sharpest divergence in support occurred for these groups. However, legislative attention towards older adults and people with disabilities declined across both parties during this time.\n\nWhile the study cannot definitively establish cause and effect, it suggests that the surge in civil rights bills and the growing partisan divide can be largely linked to the increased attention to specific social groups, particularly racial minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and women. This trend appears to be particularly influenced by prominent cases of violence against Black Americans. Despite the observational nature of the data, the researchers found that the patterns seen in percentages of civil rights legislation held when counting the raw sum of legislation as well.",
  "summary": "Legislative support for civil rights in Congress has grown over the past fifty years, but this support is increasingly divided by party. A new study indicates this polarization accelerated sharply during the 1990s and 2010s.",
  "key_points": [
    "Partisan divide over civil rights legislation widened in 1990s and 2010s",
    "Civil rights legislation support increasingly polarized along party lines",
    "Share of civil rights bills sponsored by racial minority Democrats doubled"
  ],
  "editors_take": "The growing partisan divide over civil rights legislation reflects Democrats' increased focus on bills supporting racial minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and women, while attention to other groups declined across both parties.",
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}