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Kate and Leah are joined by Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias to break down the Supreme Court’s shameful assault on multiracial democracy in its ruling on the Voting Rights Act case, Louisiana v. Callais.

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TRANSCRIPT

Melissa Murray [AD]

Show Intro Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court. It’s an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they’re going to have the last word. She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.

Leah Litman Yes, listeners, it’s here. Today, we got the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana versus Kelly, the case about the future of the Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial discrimination in redistricting. Spoiler alert, that future is over. It’s just about as bad as expected. It was, after all, written by Sam Alito. We’re gonna quickly walk through the implications and potential fallout of the case with help from Marc Elias, chair of Elias Law Group and founder of Democracy Docket, and then we may add a few additional beats on the court’s reasoning, such as it is. Welcome back to the show, Marc.

Marc Elias Well, I wish I was coming back under better circumstances, but I guess I’m glad to be back.

Kate Shaw It’s rarely the case in this line of work, but today is an especially bad one.

Marc Elias You know, Leah Litman is a judicial realist and she was right.

Kate Shaw Careful, that’s t-shirts printing in 30 seconds is the sound you’re hearing right now, but she indeed was right then and will continue to be right. Anyway, Marc, super grateful that you’re joining us on a day like this. Let’s just quickly remind our listeners of the facts of Calais. They’re pretty well known. The state of Louisiana drew districts that allowed black voters to select preferred candidates in one out of six districts, even though about one third of Louisiana citizens are black. The math wasn’t math-ing, unless districts were drawn to lock them out of power. Or maybe ding ding ding.

Leah Litman Because courts said that map violated the Voting Rights Act, Louisiana was required to draw new districts that complied with the VRA. It did so, the districts gave minority voters opportunity to select another candidate, and that compliant map with two black opportunity districts was challenged as unconstitutional discrimination. And in Calais, Sam Alito said the Voting Rights Act, properly construed, did not require Louisiana to draw a new district because its initial map, locking black voters out of political power, was very legal, very cool, very demure, and very mindful.

Kate Shaw So, okay, Marc, we are legal nerds, as are you, so we are definitely gonna get into the court’s reasoning, but this decision is also just super significant for our multiracial democracy, and kind of, we wanted to start there with a question of impact. So, can you talk about what effect the decision is going to have on maps, districting, and democracy in general?

Marc Elias Yeah, so first of all, this was as cynical a decision as the Supreme Court could possibly issue. I mean, to be honest with you, it would have been much more intellectually honest for them to just say Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional under whatever theory of unconstitution. The idea that the conservatives and the majority on this court are saying that they are properly construing Section 2 is literally them saying black voters can have districts as long as they vote for Republicans. That is essentially the holding of this. So what does this mean for democracy? It’s a big setback and we need to be honest about that. Like, you know, this was the gutting of the last piece of the Voting Rights Act doing work. And it was the provision that particularly was important because it applied nationwide. A point I might add that the chief justice himself made when he wrote the opinion striking down section five of the voting rights act in Shelby County said, don’t worry, this section two still very vital applies everywhere, don’t worry. And then he said, why?

Leah Litman And then he said, watch this.

Marc Elias So it’s look, it’s bad for a multiracial democracy. It’s bad for democracy. Like what what has happened here is that in a series of court cases, the Supreme Court has said, partisan gerrymandering, just fine. Discriminating against minority voters now just fine as law and if you want to impose a minority majority district or voting rights act district, it needs to reflect the partisan impulses of the legislature, which are just fine because partisan gerrymandering is just fine. So what we are left with is that in state after state where Republicans control the entire process, they have the legislative control and the governorial process, governor control, they will now gerrymander on explicitly partisan grounds. That will insulate them in one direction. They will trample all over the voting rights of minority voters with near impunity. And they will look and say, look, we met all the Supreme Court’s tests under the Voting Rights Act. That is why it is so cynical, Kate, because it would have been better for them to just say there is no Voting Right Act, but rather to hang that what they are now going to say is lawful under the voting Rights Act is an absolute abomination.

Kate Shaw So it’s an abomination and it’s wildly cynical. Is it also politically strategic? I mean, you know, you think about comparing a decision like this to Dobbs, which said forthrightly, we are overturning Roe versus Wade. And that really galvanized an important electoral and popular reaction. I think it’s entirely possible that a decision that said forth rightly, we are actually overruling on the grounds of the constitution, the last remaining vestige of the Voting Rights Act, that might have spurred a real response. And I hope this one does too, but was it? Kind of framed the way it was in order to reduce the chances of that kind of response and pushback.

Marc Elias Yeah, I think that’s exactly why they did it this way. I think exactly they did that way, and I think we can’t allow them to get away with that. I’m old enough, Kate, and this was very controversial at the time. It’s hard for people to recognize this was actually controversial at that time. In 1993, there was a debate in the Casey decision whether the pro-choice community ought to just say, this is overturning Roe versus Wade. And by the way, I was in the camp of saying, yeah, we ought to say what the Supreme Court is doing here. Is fundamentally altering Roe versus Wade in a way that is going to allow for its eventual chipping away and overturning. Now, that doesn’t mean I was right. It stood for a much longer period of time than I thought it would. But I think the risk that we face right now is those of us in the pro-democracy community take the bait and say, well, at least they didn’t overturn the Voting Rights Act. No, they overturned the VOTING RIGHTS ACT.

Leah Litman And I think Justice Kagan also called this out, the attempt to basically depict the opinion as doing something other than it did. You know, she said its opinion basically presents itself as understated, even antiseptic, um, and the majority doesn’t announce today’s holding as all but nullifying the Voting Rights Act. When it did, I mean, this could be the most significant Supreme court race related decision in. A while, just given, you know, dismantling the number of districts, electing representatives for minority communities that could be at stake. You know, we’ve talked about this before, but just to remind our listeners, Nick Stephanopoulos, professor at Harvard Law, voting rights expert, estimated that somewhere about 70 congressional districts could be stripped of protection under the Voting Rights Act. And that’s just the number districts in Congress. Marc, I know we’ve talk about this decision and this decision has been talked about in terms of what it might mean for the 2026. Midterms. Florida seemed interested in potentially taking this up and drawing even more districts. What might this decision mean for the upcoming midtermes?

Marc Elias All right, so Florida is, as we speak, drawing a new map and they are going to add or try to add four more Republican seats. Now I think in Florida, just at a political level, I think that’s gonna probably backfire on them. And I think actually the congressional delegation knows that which is why they’re not all that keen on this. I think Rhonda Sanders is auditioning for something else with Donald Trump and like he figures he won’t be blamed if this winds up being a dummymander. He’ll get the credit for doing the here and now. Sounds very familiar in Trump world. But I think your broader question though is the right one, which is what does this mean for 2026? What does it mean for 2020? In 2026, look, I think there will be, obviously it will affect at least one seat in Louisiana, maybe two. Perhaps it impacts a seat in Alabama, maybe, maybe not. I say that because there’s another VRA case that’s kind of percolating before the court. Beyond that, you know… Republicans need to be careful in two directions. The first is at a political level. Like they are facing an unpopular electorate that doesn’t much care for them. And it’s not like when you redistrict voters go away, right? I mean, these minority voters have to go in someone’s district. And I don’t see a lot of Republicans in these states raising their hand to say, oh yes, please take my 65% Republican district and make it a 52, 55% Republican District. In this political environment. So that may put a little bit of a break on it, but I think the real break on it for 2026 is just the logistics and the practicality. I mean, you know, the federal law requires that military and overseas ballots go out 45 days before a primary and 90 days before a general. And like, those are hard federal deadlines that like states can’t mess with. States have already had primaries. And you know there’s a lot of talk, you know on the right about, oh, we’ll just hold new primaries, let me be honest with you. And I can, you can share this with your Republican. Guests, if you ever have any. If they think they get to just disenfranchise a bunch of voters who have already voted by saying nevermind, they’re gonna get sued and under the conservatives analysis in Boston where they adopted Justice Scalia’s language about not essential, about undermining the foundation of democracy and confidence in elections by after the fact throwing out votes. Like… Like I don’t think they’re going to get away with that. At least they’re gonna get sued if they try to get away with it. So I think it’ll be relatively modest for 2026. I think 2028, you know, I hear estimates all over the place. The New York Times says 12, a fair fight. Founder of the State of the Agro says closer to 30. Nick Stephanopoulos says maybe it’s 70. Like I just, it’s going to be a lot of seats that are going to be in play, but, but I want to offer you one piece of hope. You know, after Shelby County, everybody said, this is gonna cause Democrat seats everywhere. And I went and I sued Virginia and I sued North Carolina saying, well, it turns out if section five wasn’t a rationale to draw Bobby Scott’s district, if it wasn’t rationale to support drawing the state legislative lines of Virginia, if it was a rationale to draw to gerrymandered blacks into two districts in North Carolina, then I guess it wasn’t a rationale. And I sued and I won those cases in the US Supreme Court and it led to the creation of additional black districts and additional Democratic seats in both states.

Leah Litman So I guess when you’re thinking about, you know, the prospect of future litigation, um, you know, justice Kagan did dissent, said today’s decision makes section two a dead letter. Justice Thomas seemed to enthusiastically agree saying, even though he would have said no challenge to redistricting should ever succeed this decision, basically put an ed to what he called the disastrous misadventure. You know, what does this decision do to section two and relatedly How does that interact with partisan gerrymandering, which seemed to be both part of the court’s reasoning and also what it envisioned to be the future of American democracy?

Marc Elias Yeah. So, um, first of all, I just have to say, because you guys will appreciate this. You’ve got, you’ve got justice Alito saying, we didn’t do anything here. This was just like nothing. Then you have, Justice Thomas was like, thank God we overtuned, thank god we did this.

Leah Litman Speaking of Dobbs, right? The guy can’t keep it under reps. He’s like, no, this is what we’re doing, team.

Marc Elias Like they didn’t work that out just like between them. Look, I think for Section 2 litigation, it’s going to be virtually impossible to bring Section 2 cases successfully because in order to do so, you’re going to have to say, you have to meet the political objectives of the legislature. So effectively, what this means is that if you want to bring a Section 2 case in Alabama on behalf of black voters, you need to draw a map in which the black voters vote Republican. Which the idea that we are hinging minority voting rights on a partisan outcome is an absolute catastrophe and insult. I mean, I can’t use words strongly enough. So I think that section two will no longer be a vital tool.

Leah Litman Like, you might as well require plaintiffs to show that the tooth fairy is real. Just watch the Reddit.

Marc Elias That’s right. So I think that the two tools or the two things that remain out there is number one, partisan gerrymandering, which conservatives have taken from a necessary non-justiciable evil, right? We don’t like it, but jeez, we the Supreme Court are powerless to do anything about it. We looked for a test and jeez we just couldn’t come up with it. We tried. It was just too, it was too compli-

Kate Shaw But Robert’s right, remember, and Rucho does say distasteful, maybe worse, like he is very explicit about the disapproval, but sorry, Marc, you were going to say fast forward to this. Now they have turned it into a positive good. A constitutional entitlement, the highest value, in fact.

Marc Elias It is, in fact, now a traditional religious criteria that we ought to value in the process. So that’s going on, but that doesn’t mean that state courts will do that. And so I think that there’s gonna be a lot of attention to state constitutions and state processes around partisan redistricting. And then the second, which you haven’t mentioned, is there is still an inherent tension. And this goes back to the cases that I brought after Shelby County. There is still this inherent tension between the intentional discrimination line of cases, the racial gerrymandering line of case. And this because, like, does anyone think that when Republicans are going to draw a map, you know, they’re not shuffling Black voters based on their race? I mean, of course they are. Like, they don’t want Democrats in their districts, but like, what they really don’t want are Black Democrats in the district. And if that sounds weird to people, like We were able to prove that. In the post Shelby County litigation we brought where you looked at these neighborhoods and it was a professor from Stanford who did this analysis, and I can’t believe I’m blanking on his name, Roden, Jonathan Roden I think did this, and he plotted it out on graphs, and you’d look at these neighborhood and there’d be like a group of, let’s just call them white liberals, okay, but good Democrats, but white. Next to a neighborhood of black Democrats. And the Republican legislature was taking the white Democrats, not the black Democrats, and you know that in the South in particular, that is going to be a dynamic that is gonna leave them open to those challenges. Now, the question is whether under Alexander, yet another case where they kind of like, tried to limit this, whether they’re gonna say, well, that’s okay. It’s okay if you are intentionally discriminated against black voters in that way.

Kate Shaw Well, whatever they’re going to do. Sorry if that was very wonky. No, no, but I mean, I think that sort of the point is that they have not resolved all ambiguity in this incredibly complex body of law, nor have they foreclosed all possible avenues. Now, I wouldn’t put it past them to do that down the road, but you’re saying that the evidence of even, you know, even if they do impose, if they have imposed an intentional discrimination requirement, there may be enough evidence to actually succeed in making out those claims in future litigation and. We know enough to know that you, Marc Elias, are gonna be dogged in bringing any bringable and winning any case out there that can be won, so. I wanna add one. Yeah, if there’s any note of hope that you can leave our listeners with.

Marc Elias It’s not a note of home, it’s actually a note of where we are.

Kate Shaw Okay, we’ll take that. I’ll take it. Yeah.

Marc Elias So the lawsuit that challenged the Louisiana map was in fact a racial gerrymandering challenge, right? The Supreme Court didn’t have to decide this question. The Supreme court was not asked to decide this question, the Supreme court ordered re-argument because they wanted to decide this question so there’s a lot of debate right now and I know the New York Times published some papers involving the shadow docket but there’s lot of debates about like this falling balls and strikes umpire thing? This was a case that nobody asked the Supreme Court to decide, and the Supreme Court ordered the parties to re-argue it to decide it. Yeah. And that is a procedural piece of this that I don’t think has got enough attention. It is the only other instance in my little area of the woods, but you guys are the experts, that where I have experienced this with Citizens United, where literally what the Supreme Court was asked was whether or not pay-per-view movies on cable systems. Were covered by the campaign finance laws. That’s literally the question that was posed to them. And instead of answering that, they ordered the parties to answer a different question, to brief and argue a different questions, which led to Citizens United. And it feels like the conservatives are giving up even the pretense of we are just deciding the thing that is litigated before us. And I think that’s really, that’s like another layer of assault to this injury and another. To where this court will go, if they can just not just pick and choose the cases they want to hear, but actually, then pick and chose cases they weren’t asked to hear.

Leah Litman Well, Marc, we know today is a super busy day for you. We so appreciate you taking the time to speak with us and to provide both our listeners a dose of reality and hope. So thank you so much, Marc.

Melissa Murray [AD]

Leah Litman So we are going to spend, as promised, just a little bit more on the reasoning such as it is. As Marc kind of suggested, what Justice Alito wrote in this opinion basically is if a racial community consistently votes with the party, then it’s okay to deny that racial community political representation because that’s just partisan gerrymandering and it’s awesome. The reasoning used to justify this requirement is that a plaintiff in order to succeed in a section two challenge under the Voting Rights Act has to show it was both possible to draw a map with an additional district for minority voters to elect the candidate of their choice and a map that retained the same partisan composition as the original map, if the state was trying to do partisan gerrymandering. Kind of means racial minorities could have an additional districts as long as they selected the same candidate that would have won in the state’s initial maps. That’s not a political opportunity district. But, again, as Marc was saying… Basically, this says minorities, you can have your own district if you vote Republican.

Kate Shaw Right, and the idea of a political opportunity district is one that I think the court is pretty clearly intending to deal a death blow to. That’s not actually something that a statute requires or even permits legislatures to pursue in the way that we have understood political opportunity districts, which is kind of one of the sort of sneaky and cynical things about the opinion that Marc was alluding to that it really does completely upend section two jurisprudence and pretends that it is not doing that. So. As Marc, I think, mentioned, but maybe we’ll underscore it for another minute. It’s an anti-democratic decision. It has anti- anti-Democratic reasoning. And it, the reasoning is basically that anti- Democratic behavior and in particular, kind of partisan gerrymandering is okay. It is legitimate. It is indeed a constitutional right. So let me just quote from the opinion here. In considering the constitutionality of a districting scheme, courts must treat partisan advantage like any other race neutral aim, a constitutionally permissible criterion. That states may rely on as desired. It also identified as a significant development that the court’s VRA jurisprudence had to take into account this court’s decision in Rucho versus common cause. So again, Ruchos is a decision that only seven years ago said that federal courts are not gonna intervene to stop partisan gerrymanders, but the political system should respond, could and should respond in other ways and that in any event, partisan garymandering was distasteful. Just not something that courts could actually police or superintend, and we have something wildly different on the page in this opinion.

Leah Litman Yeah, here’s what Alito had to say about Rucho, quote, the upshot of Ruchoe was that as far as federal law is concerned, a state legislature may use partisan advantage as a factor in redistricting. That’s not what Ruche said. It just said non-justiciable. Federal courts can’t remedy them. Not that they’re consistent with the constitution, much less something state legislatures are so entitled to do. They get to do other illegal, potentially illegal things in the process. And yet the Supreme Court injected partisanship and partisan gerrymandering into all aspects of the legal test for showing Voting Rights Act violations. The Jingle’s test that is to establish a Voting rights act violation has three steps. At the first step is where Justice Alito said plaintiffs have to show their alternative map would achieve the same objectives, including partisan objectives, the states would. At the second step, Justice Alita said plaintiff’s must control for party affiliation. And then the kicker, the third and final step, which is about the totality of circumstances, he says courts must focus on one thing, quote, intentional present-day voting discrimination, end quote, even though the Voting Rights Act was amended so that the law did not just prohibit intentional discrimination. And the court has also made proving discriminatory intent impossible, which was basically the Texas redistricting case where DOJ told Texas, go after majority minority coalition districts based on the Legally incorrect claim that the voting rights act prohibited them and the Supreme Court said that’s not sufficient evidence of intentional racial discrimination

Kate Shaw Now Alito maintained that he wasn’t overruling any of the court’s precedents, he was just kind of updating them, giving them a makeover, which honestly is very consistent with both originalism and textualism, which are all about updating statutes to take into account subsequent developments in the world.

Leah Litman Oh yeah, right up there in Justice Scalia’s reading law, you know, I’m pretty sure that’s like the first entry. It should be. You know, the makeover was more like Chris Jenner’s recent facelift, not great. But Justice Kagan, you said, what the majority gives us today is not an updated framework. It is its own thing, deserving of its own name, which she suggested the Calais You can try this.

Kate Shaw I think the Calais contrivance is good, I like it. In other Alito kind of reasoning that we should highlight, he wants to join John Roberts in proclaiming that racial discrimination is essentially over. So he writes, quote, vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South where many section two suits arise. He also says the Robinson court also relied on the sordid history of intentional discrimination by Louisiana officials in the decades before the Voting Rights Act’s passage. It cast aside as irrelevant the lack of evidence that black voters have faced. Intentional discrimination in recent years. That analysis had its priorities backwards. The 15th Amendment, which the Voting Rights Act enforces, is not designed to punish for the past, but works to ensure a better future. The focus of section two must therefore be on current conditions, not on decades old data relevant to decades old problems. Once again, originalism. We figure out what the 15th amendment means by looking to evidence in the past like six to 12 months. That’s originalism

Leah Litman I am just like clawing my face off because section two suits rely on current data because they measure the current extent of racial polarization, extent of residential segregation. Who cares, right? Justice Alito just pretends otherwise. And you know, the passage that Kate read from the Clay opinion sounds exactly like Shelby County’s infamous, infamous pronouncement that things have changed dramatically in South. Which Justice Alito quoted in Calais. He just thought that slapped and had aged amazingly. Justice Alito also said that the constitution really only allows there to be remedies for intentional racial discrimination. Laws or policies that have the effect of disadvantaging racial minorities, those are basically cool. So he writes, quote, the focus of section two must be enforcement of the 15th amendment’s prohibition on intentional racial discriminations. While that interpretation, that is his interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, does not demand a finding of intentional discrimination, it imposes liability only when the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred. End quote.

Kate Shaw First of all, obviously we call BS on this claim that the interpretation does not demand a finding of intentional discrimination. That’s exactly what he is requiring. Did you also catch his kind of casual reference to the quote limited authority that the 15th amendment confers?

Leah Litman Yeah, of course. Of course. Like, he just goes out of his way in this opinion to declare reconstruction ain’t no thing, right? Didn’t really allow Congress to do anything.

Kate Shaw Indeed. And that kind of sort of minimizing Congress’s role, aggrandizing the court’s role sort of is energy that permeates this opinion. So it pretty clearly does something that Shelby County maybe implicitly did, but didn’t explicitly do, which is extend this City of Bernie versus Flores decision that just wildly judicial supremacist opinion that says, we courts, not really you Congress, get to decide what the Constitution means. And here are the 14th and 15th Amendments, and it. Basically is doing that, proclaiming its own supremacy and deciding what the 15th Amendment means in the course of overruling Congress’s decision about how to enforce Reconstruction, which I guess I’ve forgotten, but I thought it was Congress and not the court that in the Constitution was given the power to enforce the Reconstruct amendments, but it must be.

Leah Litman Congress is a cuck, Constitution is for cucks, Congress is the cuck right? Justice Alito just declares things are going to be what they’re going to be.

Kate Shaw Um, Justice Kagan, of course, is, uh, speaking truth to power, right? It summarizes the court’s reasoning as availing itself again of the tools used before to dismantle the Voting Rights Act, untenable readings of statutory text made up and impossible to meet evidentiary requirements, disregard for precedent and disdain for congressional judgment.

Leah Litman A few just short additional notes before we go. One is just to re-emphasize, resist and strongly push back against efforts to minimize this decision that suggest could have been worse, they didn’t strike down the Voting Rights Act or the court even said compliance with the Votting Rights Act constitutes a compelling interest. No. That’s how Alito attempted to spin this. Indeed, that’s how he characterized his own ruling. My preferred framing would be something like a judicial coup or a revolution against multiracial democracy and for white supremacy. Second is this decision has to be understood as part of a trilogy of decisions in which the court effectively ended the Voting Rights Act, the law that made the country into a multiracial democracy. Justice Kagan characterized it as part of a set that included, as we noted, Shelby County versus Holder. After that came the 2021 decision, Bernovich versus DNC, which was about how section two applied to voting precondition challenges, you know, challenges to laws that are about whether people can vote or their votes will be counted. The court interpreted the law, you now, by making it much harder, if not impossible, to challenge voting prec- conditions. Justice Kagan’s dissent cites an article by Professor Rick Haasson showing that since Bernovich there have been zero zip successful challenges to voting pre-conditions under section two. And the last piece, as Justice Kagan describes it in her dissent, is Section 2 as applied to redistricting, right? That’s what this decision takes aim at. You want to read a few more passages from Justice Kagen’s dissent or anything else?

Kate Shaw Let me just say maybe one more thing. So I think in addition to connecting this opinion to the other VRA opinions the court has handed down, I think what Marc said about Citizens United is actually also really important in that this is both a case where the court overreached really badly and just deciding to change a question in order to give itself an opportunity to supply an answer it wanted to give, but also because I think Citizens United I think has had kind of in the 75 or 80 percent of Americans disapprove. There are constitutional amendment efforts sort of underway to this day And I think that that this opinion too should have that kind of effect And I, think that what you said about resisting minimization frameworks is is just so important Um, and I think, that linking this opinion to again both VRA and citizens united. Um, I think is critical So yeah, maybe let’s end with a couple more lines from Kagan’s dissent.

Leah Litman Well, so one more since you said that yeah So one more, since you said that and also link it to the Texas redistricting decision, because what the court is saying is, you can use race in partisan gerrymandering, but you can’t use race to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Kate Shaw Yeah, you have to… And that is… It said both of those things. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. So that actually is the story of what happened in Calais, you know, except no alternative explanations. Okay. So to end with a few more Kagan lines, she says, I dissent. The Voting Rights Act is, or now more accurately was, one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our nation’s history. I dissent because the court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I diss ent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality and electoral opportunity. I diss sent. And maybe one more. Okay, so the VRA was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly and overwhelmingly reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed, not the members of this court. I descend then from this latest chapter in the majority’s now completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.

Leah Litman If those quotes didn’t capture it, like this is the anti-democracy court and if this decision doesn’t kind of get people to realize that Supreme Court reform has to be part of democracy reform, I’m not sure what would, please send this podcast to your local Democratic representative because what this decision shows is Congress can enact all of the voting rights protections that it wants, and it won’t matter if this court nullifies them or invalidates them.

Kate Shaw And maybe just one last asterisk, which is that if and when the chief justice writes the opinion for the court in the birthright citizenship case, saying the president cannot nullify the 14th Amendment by trying to nuke birthrights citizenship, remember in sort of all the celebration of John Roberts’ institutionalist that John Roberts gave this opinion to Sam Alito. He joined the opinion and the opinion nullified the 15th Amendment and the law that made this country into a multiracial democracy and. Try to bear that in mind and let it temper your celebration of that opinion if and when John Roberts pens it.

Leah Litman Indeed. And look, we are only at the end of April. And wow, we are already getting really bad decisions. Which means by the time we are at the End of June, help us. And, you know, if you would like to, I don’t know, participate in our processing and coping, a little catharsis with a reminder that we will be in New York City at the of June. You can catch us live at the historic Gramercy Theater. On June 20th in New York City. Tickets are on sale now. Grab them while you can at crooked.com.

Kate Shaw All right, I’ll be back in your ear holes for a regular episode on Monday morning. Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production, hosted and executive produced by Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, and me, Kate Shaw. Our senior producer and editor is Melody Rowell, Michael Goldsmith is our producer, Jordan Thomas is our intern, music by Eddie Cooper, production support from Katie Long and Adrienne Hill, Matt DeGroot is our head of production, and thanks to our digital team, Ben Hethcoat, Johanna Case, Kenny Moffat, and Eric Schutt. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to Strict Scrutiny in your favorite podcast app and on YouTube at Strict Scrutiny Podcast so you never miss an episode. And if you wanna help other people find the show, please rate and review us, it really helps.