MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Today, the Supreme Court drastically altered a key part of the Voting Rights Act. At issue, a Louisiana redistricting map. It had created a second majority-Black district in an effort to better represent that state's Black community, which makes up about a third of the population there. The court struck down that map, saying it amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The ruling weakens Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which was intended to prevent racial discrimination and which is considered a triumph of the Civil Rights Movement. So what does today's ruling mean? For that, we have called Rick Hasen. He's an expert on election law, teaches at UCLA Law School. Rick Hasen, welcome.
RICK HASEN: Good to be with you.
KELLY: How big a deal is this ruling?
HASEN: I think this is one of the most important and most pernicious decisions of the Supreme Court in the last century. So that might sound like hyperbole, but I think that is an accurate description of what the court did.
KELLY: Well, I want to get to both - why most important and why most pernicious. This was a 6-3 ruling, as you know. All the Republican appointees in favor. All the Democratic appointees opposed. Would you just walk us briefly through the majority reasoning?
HASEN: So the question in the case was whether Louisiana made race too important when it drew its district lines. And the Supreme Court said, yes, and that in order to get there, the court had to say what the Voting Rights Act required and why Louisiana didn't have to draw this map the way that it did. Since 1982, when Congress amended Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, it's been understood to require race consciousness. Look at the representation that Black or Latino or Native American voters have in the state. Look at the size of the districts. Look at whether whites and minority voters prefer different candidates. And draw districts whenever there's the possibility that minority voters would not get a chance to elect their candidates of choice.
KELLY: So what does this mean for Section 2 for the Voting Rights Act?
HASEN: So it's important to understand that Section 2 applies not just to congressional maps but to state legislatures, to city councils, to school board elections - any place where there's racially polarized voting where whites and minority voters prefer different candidates and minority voters have not had a chance to elect their candidates of choice. These jurisdictions have had to draw these districts to give minority voters a chance. Now all of those districts are potentially going to be dismantled. And so we can see legislatures go back and take these districts and break up concentrations of minority voters to help their political party. And it won't just be Republicans doing this. It will also be Democrats doing this. And so the losers are going to be the minority voters as well as the American people.
KELLY: At issue, as we've said, is a map from Louisiana - one map from one state. How do you see this ruling potentially affecting other states? How do you see it affecting the midterms?
HASEN: Well, let's take the midterms first. Many states have already held their primaries, and it would be unusual, to say the least, for states to go back and rerun their primaries. So in those states...
KELLY: Redraw the maps and rerun the primaries. Right.
HASEN: Right.
KELLY: Yeah.
HASEN: So in those states, that's unlikely to happen. But let's take Florida. Florida right now, is considering a re-redistricting (ph) to give Republicans more seats in the Congress. This is part of that gerrymandering war that's going on between Democrats and Republicans around the country. Well, now, when Republicans consider the maps, they can essentially ignore what used to be the requirements of Section 2 and draw more maps to help Republicans in the state.
KELLY: You know, if you look back to 2023, when the court took up a similar case, Allen v. Milligan, out of Alabama, the justices landed in a different place. But I raised that one because Justice Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion - he wondered, should there be a time limit on the ability of states to conduct race-based redistricting? He wrote, it couldn't extend indefinitely. Are you open to that argument? Should there be a sunset to considering race when drawing electoral districts?
HASEN: The thing about Section 2 is that it is self-sunsetting. One of the requirements, as it was understood until today's decision, was that there had to be racially polarized voting where white voters and minority voters prefer different candidates, and minority voters usually lost. If we move to a situation where there was no more racially polarized voting, and that has happened in some parts of the country, then there are no Section 2 cases to win.
KELLY: So what are you going to be watching for in the days to come?
HASEN: So there's going to be action in legislatures and in courts. In places like Florida, they're going to be able to re-redistrict and not take into account what we otherwise understood to be the requirements of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In various states, there will be lawsuits where there will be challenges to existing maps that were drawn, probably not in time for 2026 but certainly in time for 2028. And I think there are going to be attacks on state voting rights acts.
KELLY: That is UCLA Law professor Rick Hasen. Thank you very much.
HASEN: Thank you.
KELLY: And since we spoke, the Florida legislature did pass a new congressional map that could help Republicans win four new seats in the House. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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