'If You Can Keep It': The Supreme Court And The Voting Rights Act

This message comes from the CBS Evening News Podcast, hosted by Tony DeCopel, delivering breakthrough national and world news, along with original reporting and insight. Stay informed when it works for you. Listen to the CBS Evening News podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Last week in a six to three ruling, along ideological lines, the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That's the landmark civil rights era law designed to prevent racial discrimination in voting. The law was passed to unravel Jim Crow era policies that limited or blocked black Americans' access to the ballot. The decision in Louisiana V. Kelley struck down Louisiana's congressional map as a, quote, "unconstitutional" gerrymander. But the ruling goes a lot further. It effectively re-writes the rule for how the Voting Rights Act can be used to challenge discriminatory maps, making it much harder to do so going forward. The latest in a string of rulings, rendering the Voting Rights Act all but moved. I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd Zwollack. You're listening to the OneA podcast. Today on if you can keep it redistricting across the U.S. and how this hugely consequential ruling changes the election season already in full swing. Later on in the hour we're going to hear from Congressman Cleo Fields, the Democrat who represents Louisiana's sixth congressional district. That's the majority black district that reaches from the Northwest corner down to the center of Louisiana. With the Supreme Court ruling, Louisiana's governor issued an executive order to suspend the state's May 16th primary and to redraw the map in a way that could eliminate this majority black district entirely. But first a quick break we'll be back in just a moment. This message comes from the NBC News podcast "Here's the scoop." This month, Senior Legal Correspondent Laura Jarrett talks with experts and lawyers behind Supreme Court cases of the past and how those cases are shaping decisions today. Listen now on "Here's the scoop." Welcome back to the OneA podcast. You're listening to our weekly series "If You Can Keep It." Let's get right into our conversation and meet our guests. Joining us from Sedona, Arizona is Karim Creighton. He's vice president of the Washington office of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. He's also a law and political science scholar who tracks how redistricting shapes minority representation in the U.S. Karim looking to the program. Thank you so much for having me. And also with us, Carrie Levine, Editor-in-Chief of Vote Beat that's a non-profit newsroom covering elections and voting across the U.S. She joins us in studio in Washington. Carrie, welcome back to the program. Thank you and thanks so much for having me. Carrie, summarize last week's court ruling and the decision of the majority opinion of the court. Right. So the ruling was about the Louisiana Congressional map, as you said. And it specifically was about a key provision of the Voting Rights Act section 2, which has long empowered voters and candidates of color. And so the long-term impacts of this could be profound in terms of the representation of communities of color across the country. This has long been something that was a tool that could be used to empower those voters and to create room for those candidates who represent those communities. And so the prediction several analyses have predicted that the number of, for instance, black representatives in Congress will dramatically go down because of this ruling, though I think there's still some unpredictable things about how it's going to play out. The court in this case didn't outright strike down the provision, which I think some people had anticipated as a possibility. But it did say that section 2 is violated, quote, only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the state intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race. And so that's what Justice Alita wrote. That's a much higher bar. And in a dissent, Justice Alina Kagan wrote that today's decision rendered section 2 all but a dead letter. And so that's kind of where that decision leaves us. Well, and Kareem, just walk us through what section 2 actually did and what it will no longer do after this ruling. Sure. Well, section 2, by many, has been described as the sword of voting rights enforcement and essentially allows at this point individual plaintiffs or the Justice Department to go into court when they think that a plan or a, in this case for redistricting map that has either intentionally or through its effect essentially diluted their vote, prevented them from exercising equal opportunity to elect candidates. The distinction here that has been seriously undercut by this opinion is the effects claim that even if you don't have evidence of intent and we can get back to that later, there's a framework that section 2 has used basically for about 40 years that allows plaintiffs to go in and prove their cases. It's an exacting standard. Essentially, you go in, you have to show the the map that has been drawn essentially eliminates a community that is sufficiently large and compact that is identifying well in terms of its politics and that is subject to what we call racially polarized voting, that in the way that the map that's being challenged operates that those voters in the community, let's just take African Americans as an example, are less likely over a series of elections to get their preferred candidates elected because white voters generally don't agree to the same candidates that African Americans do and when there's racially polarized voting and the other circumstances are demonstrated, the court then is allowed to make a judgment as to what the best remedy is and in many cases the remedy has been creating a district that has something like a majority of the plaintiffs class in this case African Americans so that they can elect candidates. So that's been the rule that has existed basically for about 40 years. This decision essentially undercuts that entire structure by saying even if you can show what looks like polarized voting, you now have to demonstrate that it's not something like politics that's explaining the difference or partisanship and that is very difficult in the South because everybody understands that race and party are very closely aligned and I think just a solito would have it that those two things aren't the same and I think the lived experience of everybody dealing with the voting right deck shows that partisanship in many ways is if not totally driven by heavily shaped by the attention to race. Well Ben Akinaga is the Louisiana Solicitor General who argued to strike down the state's majority black congressional district the one we're talking about here is speaking outside the Supreme Court after all arguments back in October. If you know Louisiana story you know that for the past couple of years we have been struggling to find a map the congressional map that satisfies the court's precedence. It's been extremely difficult we argued it once earlier this year we're back here and what I told the court at the podium is look at the at the end of the day we really need clarity the states need clarity on how they're supposed to comply with the voting rights acts and with the equal protection clause. So Kareem laid out the legal reasoning that just a Samuel Samuel Alito who wrote the majority opinion sort of how the legal reasoning goes here. Kareem the ripple effects of the court ruling here have been significant they've been swift Alabama just today after the decision dropped the attorney general there else there Steve Marshall and the secretary of state there both Republicans filed emergency motions to lift injunctions blocking their 2021 map so jurisdictions all across the south are now moving to get rid of districts that before fell under section two of the VRA give us a sense of just how quickly districts could fall ahead of the midterms here. Right so that's a really complicated question at a chaotic moment. I think one thing is in our reporting I think what we've realized is states are going to move as Alabama is to try and redraw before the midterms it's very likely that some of that won't be possible. As you point out Alabama's options here depend on some more court rulings and some things that are in play they're going to need a court to say that they can do this in some cases. In other cases states have already held their primaries people have already voted filing deadlines have passed candidates have filed to run under the current district by boundaries in some cases early voting is underway now what we saw in Louisiana was as early voting was starting governor Landry as as you pointed out issued an emergency declaration said that votes for house candidates on this ballot will not count and there will be another primary for house candidates after this redrawing happens there's currently litigation over that whether he can do that either way I can tell you that what's happening right now is incredibly confusing for voters I mean Louisiana voters are looking at ballots with house candidates on them but getting told that if they cast votes in those races those won't count and they'll be another primary this is hugely and some have already voted some have already voted and this is hugely confusing to voters who have done nothing at all wrong show up and get handed ballots right here you could also mean for those charged with seeing election processes actually happen and happen efficiently for voters so That's a great question that's really important to us. It will be that we cover closely, and the answer is, this is an enormously difficult question. When people file to be candidates, they have to meet requirements. Election officials have to make sure that that happens, that these people should go on the ballot. And in addition to that, ballots have to be designed, proofed, printed, and there have to be a bunch of different ballot styles with the right races on there for each voter. Voters have to be assigned to the right district so that they get the right races on their ballots. This is a hugely complicated process that does not happen overnight. Complicated and expensive. And the other thing is, I haven't heard anyone from Louisiana talk about how they're gonna pay for this. We got this message from one of you in Alabama. We drew this crazy map that nobody likes, that puts one side of the state in the hands of the other side of the state. They did that on purpose. They could have drawn a map that was contingent and would have given blacks their fair vote. It just races them. Racism. It's just around our country. Still ahead, we hear from Louisiana Congressman affected by the Supreme Court's decision. This week on the MPR Politics Podcast, an extraordinary week for presidential power. The Trump DOJ created a billion dollar fund for victims of quote, "government weaponization." And in key primaries, the president successfully ousted incumbents that he views as disloyal. We're covering it all and what it means for November's midterms on the MPR Politics Podcast. Listen on the MPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get back to our conversation now. We're looking at the Supreme Court's decision last week that weekends the Voting Rights Act and what's happening across the country as a result. We've been hearing from many of you here Steve from South Carolina. I'm Steve. I live in Greater Charleston, South Carolina area. I'm pretty sure that even though I religiously vote, my vote has not necessarily mattered due to relatively speaking a gerrymandered set of districts and to say to South Carolina. That doesn't mean I'm not gonna vote. That doesn't mean I'm not gonna be involved and it's just my opinion. It just doesn't mean in practical terms that my vote actually counted toward a better outcome for the country. - The South Carolina's congressional map was redrawn in 2022. It's based intense legal battles in recent years. Kerry, what's important to know about that state as we try to understand the nationwide redistricting story today? - I think what I'd say about South Carolina is that it's representative of some of the states in the South that have voting rights districts. They've been incredibly important and meaningful to some of the residents there. And so it is a state whose primary has not happened yet that is still in a position to redraw and where these redistricting battles have just been really hard fought. And there's substantial questions of representation and how well the map represents the entire voting public. And so we have already around the country been through an unprecedented cycle of midterm redistricting, right? At a time when that does not usually happen and unprecedented numbers of states have redrawn their maps six, I believe, including Florida have voluntarily redone. So this, you know, done so this cycle, which is not something that has happened in modern times. And the effect of that is there are fewer competitive districts, right? And these maps are in most cases, not all, but in most cases, less fair by all of the kind of neutral standards that maps are evaluated at. And so depending on what South Carolina does, these are the stakes here. - So, Kareem, from where you sit to talk a little bit more about what Kareee is mentioning, there was a redistricting war that was going on before the Calais ruling that we're talking about before the dilution of Black voting power in Louisiana and the South, of course, Texas started it. Donald Trump started it when he asked Texas Republicans to give him five seats. They did, then Democrats in California responded and now we're off to the races. So from where you sit, where are we at in terms of representation and people's votes counting, heading into the midterms? - Well, it's important, as we talk about this, to distinguish the discussion about partisanship as it's driven, as you describe, the fight that has started by the White House asking Texas to jump into the frame at decade and all the other states pushing back from the conversation that began with the Calais decision, which really is about racial fairness. And while there is a connection between the two, I think unfortunately the Calais decision can flate it, but where are we right now? Is a really complicated question. I think after Virginia had its public ballot measure presented to the people and narrowly passed it to changes districts. I think most people viewed things as more or less at a kind of standstill. So there was a lot of effort put into fighting and state legislatures to get these new districts adopted with all the confusion and chaos that it likely will lead to for voters. And basically the numbers are pretty much even. However, now that Calais on the books, I think there are a lot of states that are looking at this and they're probably also looking at the nation's politics at present. And I think they're trying to get an edge wherever possible. So we won't know for all of the legal reasons that were mentioned earlier where this is going to land, but I think at present, I think everyone is sort of being energized to act largely because of the interest in having, I think, an outsized influence in Congress. And we'll just have to see, after all, the legal wrangling is over where things end. - Well, Krima, I want to pull on this thread a little bit because you said you think people are conflating that the Calais decision with this larger push to redistrict. And why do you think it's important to separate the two? - Well, it's important because the Voting Rights Act itself was always viewed as a bipartisan piece of legislation that was getting at something larger than partisanship. It was trying to make good on America's commitment long delayed to give meaning to the 14th and 15th Amendment, that people should be able to have, regardless of race, a meaningful and equal vote cast, which would include the ability to be represented. And it's important to note, as much as, again, this is, by some, being viewed through a partisan lens, the last time the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized was in 2006, and no one less than George W. Bush, not viewed as the most flaming liberal on the planet, and a Republican Congress all authorized that act. It had been viewed as a consensus view of the American public. It is, unfortunately, now, partly because of our politics at present, but also because I think of some unfortunate misreasoning offered by Justice Alito has been folded into a partisan framework, and I think in a very unhelpful way, most unhelpful with respect to the Voting Rights Act, to the very communities that the Voting Rights Act was designed to support. - I'm also curious to hear from you, Keri, what you make of the speed at which the Voting Rights Act has been really torn apart. I did a little math and realized that my oldest siblings were born before the Voting Rights Act passed. So this is not a law that's been on the books for generations and generations. This is still in the larger scope of history, a relatively new law. - That's such an interesting point, and I think we've seen the nation change around the law and the way it thinks about these issues and an incredible speed. And I think that there's more change yet to come. I think one thing I would say to that is, Justice Alito's decision really made me think a lot about a previous decision that the court had made on redistricting in a case called Root Joverse's Common Cause, in which the court essentially said, federal courts really can't be deciding. And Keri, I think put this more elegantly than I would, but federal courts really can't be deciding when partisan gerrymandering causes the line into too much partisan gerrymandering. Partisan gerrymandering is distasteful and we don't love it, but we can't really step in and start arbitrating it. And I thought that the decision that Justice Alito wrote really treated partisan, distracting decisions as if they were a much more legitimate reason to draw a district line. It didn't treat it in quite the same distasteful way as the court had in Ruja. It was recognizing it almost to my reading as if it was a legitimate sort of thing for lawmakers to do a legitimate reason for them to have. And so it kind of elevated that. And I thought that it was somewhat reflective of the times that we lived into your point. I think about the speed at which this law has had its life cycle has come to this point. I think that we're seeing the evolution of our thinking about a lot of things as a society and how that shifted over time in these decisions and in how this law is being interpreted by the court. Keri, anything to add? Yes, thank you. I appreciate the point about partisan gerrymandering. I, in a previous job, was very intimately involved trying to present to the court and argue that it should act, it chose not to. But in fact, it has not just, I think, allowed it to be a legitimate interest. It is incentivized in Calais, the attention to partisanship as a cure all. That is, the concerns about race discrimination are less important than a state policy that says, we are, let's just say, Republicans, and we like Republicans, and if we want to have more Republican districts and the cost of that business is that we ignore concerns by African Americans because they aren't Republicans, so be it. That has to be a very endemic understanding of what the Voting Rights Act was intended to do. But for this court that purports to be standing outside of the space of partisanship, they do a lot of work that seems to encourage it. And that's really unfortunate. - Over hearing from lots of you, Jay emailed Oklahoma City had a Democratic representative for two years in 2019. The Republicans got to redraw the districts in 2020 and split the city into multiple districts, deluding the vote and forcing the Democrat out in the next election. All our representatives are Republican now, which means they can't squeeze any more red out of this stone. And David, in Ohio emailed, I live in a one-party county in a different party controlled state and country. I can and always vote, however, the partisanship mostly keeps me from voting for who I want through the lack of instant runoff or ranked choice voting. Also being forced to choose one party in a primary. The Jerry Mandering means that the primary results almost always lead to a winner in the general elections. - Karim, we've been hearing from so many voters. Jen just gave voice to several of them there. We heard from Steve earlier from South Carolina, who says, "Yeah, I'm gonna vote, "but I've been convinced for years, "my vote doesn't mean anything in this Jerry Mandered State." Can you talk about the cost of that calculation by voters, the cost to democracy, essentially that politicians now are choosing their voters instead of voters choosing their politicians? - Absolutely. We talked earlier about the monetary cost and they are significant to jumping back in the middle of a decade to reorganize these districts. But the cost of voters, I think, is really the thing that is the most dangerous as much as the financial cost is significant. It's important to remember, and particularly in the South, it is the growing part of our country, the engine of growth in this country is in the South, broadly defined, going all into the West, into the Sun Belt, but in those areas, all of the growth is like 85% of that growth is communities of color. And these are the very communities that are being fenced out because of the Cal A decision. The danger is that those really heartbreaking concerns that are being expressed from the calls that you're hearing from, and I've heard plenty of it on my own, they will eventually, because of this growth, become a majority of the population. And when a majority of the population feels like A, I can't vote for whatever reason. I'm being intimidated. Those rules that are set up, don't get me the candidates that I would prefer, or any number of the other things. I'm confused and I get, you know, sent to the wrong polling place. If a majority of the people in a society don't feel like the democratic experience of voting is an important one, or even a meaningful one, you can call that a lot of different things, but I don't think you can fairly call it a democracy. So there's an existential danger if we get to the point in many of these states where a majority of the population is unable, or for that matter, just essentially disincentivized from engaging in the core notion of politics. This isn't just about the D's and the R's, you know, getting a majority of the seats. This really is about whether the public sees the democratic experiment as one worthy of their time and in trouble. Monica and Vermont email, I don't understand why voting district maps are not simply drawn by someone who knows nothing about the racial makeup of the state. They could simply combine adjacent towns in order to create roughly equal sized districts in terms of total population, perhaps taking into account geographic features that separate regions, such as mountain ranges, but no racial or political factors. Kerry, we have seen some states I'm thinking of states like Michigan that have taken redistricting out of the hands of their state legislatures and turned it over to voters. That can't happen in every state, not every state has the ability to put that kind of voter driven initiative on their ballot, but where have we seen states try to step away from gerrymandering, which is done by both parties? Yeah, I really love this question. Thank you so much for asking it. And thanks to the readers who wrote in to ask it. So yes, we have seen states do that. Arizona has an independent redistricting commission, as you said Michigan did. And I think this is something that really over the last decade I felt like was catching on. More states were looking at doing this. We're creating neutral commissions. People were studying them and finding that the maps were fairer. I will say that one of the premises, I think, that that movement was based on is that people don't like partisan gerrymandering. People don't like it when they see districts carved up in ways that they don't think is going to reflect people having a meaningful say and electing their representatives. And so this was a push and response to that. But I did talk to a law professor last week in the wake of the Kalei decision who said that she really felt as though the Virginia and California referendums did show that when people have sufficient reason, they will endorse partisan gerrymandering. Those are states that had commissions and those are states that had said that they were not going to engage in this. And then in response to what we've already discussed, which is President Trump's push for a Texas redraw of its maps in an effort to speak to that and take away the benefits he might get from that Virginia and California then rejuve their maps as this redistricting war started to light up around the country. And so what we saw is that states that had passed these redistricting commissions were willing to make some exceptions here. And so one of the things I am wondering about is the future of those efforts. Well, unfortunately, we talk about gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering in the health of our democracy. We have to talk about naked partisan advantage because that's also what this is about. Let me just play you a clip from House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries representing New York who's been talking about the partisan gerrymandering war going on right now. Democrats haven't lost the gerrymandering battle. We're winning it. He says we're winning it. Kerry Levine, Republicans are staring down the barrel of a midterm election. They are unpopular. President Trump is very unpopular. Everybody's starting to price in that Republicans might lose control. Can you just give us a brief update on sort of the prospect of House control given the gerrymandering advantage war that's going on, that the battle for seats before anybody votes? Right. So we actually just reported on that in something that I believe published on our site this morning. My colleague, Nathaniel, I could talk to a redistricting expert, Jonathan Serves, who has estimated how the eight new maps produced in this unprecedented recent redraw were going to perform in a variety of political environments. And he was estimating that the new maps that have passed up until now-- so sort of through Florida, which still has to be finalized-- would produce an average net democratic gain of 2.69 seats. 2.69. So that's an estimate, and it's an average. And these things play out differently in elections on the ground. But I just want to note that this may not have played out the way people expected when it started. We have to take a quick break, but still ahead. We hear from Representative Cleo Fields, a Democrat representing the Baton Rouge area of Louisiana. Stay with us. [MUSIC PLAYING] This week on Here and Now Anytime, surprising climate solutions from farms sharing land with solar plants. Farming 50 years from now is going to look a lot different, to using AI for early detection of wildfires. Just keeps the system running and ensures that we're going to get alerts when we need them every time we need them. Listen to Here and Now anytime on the NPR app or wherever you can. You're podcasts. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome back to the Weday Podcast. We're talking about redistricting and the Voting Rights Act. Let's turn now to Representative Cleo Fields. He's a Democrat representing the Baton Rouge area of Louisiana. The state's congressional map was deemed an unconstitutional gerrymandor by the Supreme Court last week. Justice has found that state lawmakers rely too heavily on race when creating the majority black district that Congressman Fields represents. Congressman, welcome to 1A. Well, good to be with you. I appreciate you having me today. Congressman, your district is in the news. I think it's safe to say that. And so are your prospects for re-election now that the state of Louisiana is stopping everything to redraw your district. Tell us about your district a little bit, who lives there and what it's like. Well, the district runs from three port to Baton Rouge. It's both urban and rural America. It's a majority, but black. And it's people who have not had representation. The kind of representation that they have always desired in Congress for years. And it also have agriculture. It has universities, colleges. And it's a district that has been disenfranchised for decades. And I'm excited and happy to represent it and plan to continue to represent it. The governor and the Secretary of State is just wrong. They shouldn't have suspended the election. Over 100,000 ballots had already been sent to citizens. Candidates had already qualified under the present map. And people had started voting. Voting did not start Saturday. Voting started weeks ago. And we're challenging that because the Supreme Court, what it did not say, did not say suspend an election. It simply said that the sixth district was a racial jerrymanter. And courts have held in the past that when you are close to an election, you shouldn't change the rules on a line. So this was even worse. This was-- we were in the middle of an election. But the climate of this country now is-- you want your party to have the majority seats. I mean, that's why the president was felt some comfort in picking up the phone, calling Texas and saying, I need five more Republican seats. And they go in action and do it. Well, Congressman, you're in Baton Rouge now among your constituents there. And it's interesting, you haven't served a single day in Congress without a lawsuit before the Supreme Court over your district. What are your constituents saying to you? How are they responding to this decision? They upset. And I tell them, you got to voice that anger at the ballot box. And they are doing that. They are going to the polls and record numbers early voting. And I'm telling them to vote the entire ballot. Don't-- this election is suspended by the state, but it has not been suspended by the Supreme Court. Let the Supreme Court decide yet again that African-Americans and majority-- I mean, and whites, people in Louisiana have voted and their votes won't count. You know, Rue 44.1 gives the adverse party-- any party actually to have also-- once the Supreme Court rules, they got 25 days to request a reher. And I mean, the state just went in action right away. But this is the same state, where we got Plessy V Ferguson. Where the Supreme Court ruled that the separate but equal did not violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. I have to keep people engaged. I have to keep people inspired. I have to let them know this is not the end of the road. People before me have fought bigger and harder battles. And we have to continue to fight these battles, particularly in the southern part of our country. And they just can't get dissillusion to the extent that they stop voting. And that's the biggest challenge we have. But I'm happy to report people actually getting out and they're voting. And I hope they're voting the entire ticket. Well, Congressman, you talk about the stakes here. Jen mentioned the long arc of the Civil Rights Movement and the Voting Rights Act 1965. And that it just wasn't that long ago that the Voting Rights Act was passed. Can you talk about the conversations you have with your constituents about what's at stake for voters in general and for black voters across the South? Your district is not the only one that's probably going to get cracked after Calais. So when your constituents come up to you to talk about what's at stake, what are those conversations like? You know, people's right to vote. I mean, at the end of the day, when they talk to me, be it by phone or in person, I just tell them, you know, it's everybody. It's not just, you know, I tell people, you know, the issue is not Revenue. Cleo feels serves another day in Congress. That's not the issue. The real issue, you know, is Revenue. A person like me, you know, will have a mere opportunity to serve in Congress. There's no history of a black person being elected to Congress from a majority white district in Louisiana. There's just no history of that. Is there history of blacks running for Congress from a majority white district? You bet there is. I'm one of them. You know, blacks have run for Congress before in majority, very qualified candidates. And, and, and, and, you know, in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, there's a lot of black voting that takes place. And so, you know, that's why we came about, that's why the Congress voted on the voting rights act in the, in the first place, because although we had a 15th Amendment right to vote, there were states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, they were, you know, putting obstacles in front of, you know, people of color in order to even register to vote, you know, their folk who had to state the preamma to the Constitution, they were faced with poll tax. They were faced with all kinds of obstacles. And then the Congress and the president, Lyndon B. Johnson at that time, said, you know what? We're going to change this. We're going to have a voting rights act. And then they took away Section 5, which was like the real, you know, meat of the voting rights act, those states that were under Section 5, you know, when, when, when, when the government would pass laws, they had to get it pre-cleared. And now they took away Section 2. Well, we're, we're getting questions from our listeners. The Senate and North Carolina email that the Democrats take control of the House and Senate and the 2026 election. Is there anything they can do to mitigate the potential harm of the recent Supreme Court decision? Congressman, if you are reelected, how do you plan to work with colleagues in Congress on a legislative response to the courts, really? I, I think there needs to be an inemitted response. I mean, I think as soon as the new Congress is elected, you know, be, you know, if I'm in it or not, doesn't matter. We really need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court seems to, you know, be, you know, you know, you know, don't know about what takes place in the southern part of our country, saying we have overcome all of these racial issues of the past and, and we don't need Section 5 and we don't need Section 2. We got to prove intent, you know, forget about the effect, the intent is to what count. We need to pass a Voting Rights Act that has real teeth in it that basically says, listen, you know, a person. First of all, we need to redo. We need to have a section of the Voting Rights Act for states that have a history of discriminating against blacks. All of those redistricting laws must be approved and we make it, need to make it clear and explicit. Leave nothing fuck a question for the Supreme Court. No ambiguity whatsoever. Make sure those states, you know, have precreference and make sure that people's votes are not diluted. Well, Congressman, we're going to, we're going to be following the next Congress very closely. I just want to ask you a little bit more quickly about what else is going on in Louisiana. This isn't the only story that we're tracking in your, in your state because last week state lawmakers passed a new bill to merge. This is in New Orleans now, criminal and civil clerks. These two offices merge them into one office and that basically abolishes the seat of newly elected Calvin Duncan. He's a formerly incarcerated black man who won his race for criminal clerk with 68% of the vote. He started the job today after a judge granted Duncan's request for a temporary restraining order against the state to keep it from enforcing the bill. So Congressman, do you see any connection between that move by the state legislature to basically legally gerrymandor Duncan out of a job and the Supreme Court's ruling for your district? Yeah, absolutely, but I think the court ruled last night that he can now take his seat and I said it all alone. Look, the people of Louisiana have spoken, you know, you can't, I mean, who does that? I mean, who eliminates a seat after the people of the district have already said you are elected to represent us? That's, that's, that's, that's, that's un-American is unconscionable and it's just unbelievable. And I'm glad that the court spoke to that. Just as I think the court should speak to this, the present case, you know? Well, Congressman, just before we let you go very briefly, what are the days ahead look like for you? What are you planning to do for your constituents and to potentially protect your district? Well, I mean, we hold in several town hall meetings, the Nightwinds report, tomorrow night we in Alexandria and Wednesday we in Lafayette and Thursday we in Baton Rouge, just inform in the public as to what's taking place as relates to the Cali case. And we plan to keep, you know, people in form and get them involved and and and and that's what we plan to do for the next several days. That's Louisiana Democratic Representative Cleo Feehlts, his district was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court last week. Congressman, thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Bye. Now let's get back to our guests for the rest of the hour. Karim Creighton of the Brennan Center for Justice and Carrie Levine from vote beat. More in Florida email, I live in Naples, Florida and our district was cut in two with a new redistricting. In 2010, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment that says districts cannot be drawn in favor of a particular candidate or party. This action from Governor DeSantis voted by the Republican Party is a violation of their oath of office. This is wrong. Carrie just very briefly explained what's happening in Florida. Right, so there's federal law that applies to redistricting, but different states also have parameters. And as this a listener has pointed out, Florida's constitution doesn't allow redistricting for partisan purposes. So, the governor and state lawmakers have offered other reasons for this, though it is coming from a mid-a-national fight fueled by partisan reasons. And I think the general consensus is that's got something to do with this. Carrie, we were talking about this in my family over the weekend, the issue of gerrymandering and the issue of Calais. And somebody asked me a great question, why can't congressional districts basically be squares or rectangles appropriately drawn because a rectangle is the fairest shape I can think of? And it's a good question. We got this question from Robert, what would a fair voting map look like in each state? And perhaps more importantly, how would it be technically determined in a fair manner? It seems to me this task could be made objective with good data and a program interpreting those data. So, cream, how would you do it if it's not just rectangles? So, just a couple of points about that. I mean, our states aren't all rectangles for one thing. And people don't live in perfectly primary shapes. And that's one of the reasons why it's difficult to just sort of have what might be, arguably, appealing. And so, what we do instead is try to take a lot of different factors into account. There is a formula for getting districts that are more fair. One element of it is having districts driven by data. Let us to say information about where people live, what they see their communities as, and frankly, what has been done in the past. We might want to follow the pattern. We might not. But to give at least a sense of regularity and how decisions are made about how districts are drawn. But more important than that, I think, are the concerns about transparency. One of the big challenges we see in the current era is most of those decisions about how districts are drawn. With the exceptions of places that Kerry talked about earlier that use independent commissions, those decisions are taken behind closed doors. And frankly, the Supreme Court has blessed decisions that make the public less aware of those decisions and the information that goes into the decisions. So, and related to the transparency concern, just briefly, as to say, we want the public to be able to say what makes sense to them. So when those three factors are in play, it seems to be you're more likely to get what looks like a fair district. So just in the final moments that we have here, if you can keep it this regular segment, we do on 1A is titled because Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government the founders created and he answered a republic if you can keep it. So after this past week, including the Supreme Court ruling, the redistricting scramble already underway, and Louisiana's primary and jeopardy very briefly from each of you, how are you feeling about our ability to keep it, Kerry? That's a big question, right? I have a lot of faith in the American public in voters. I think that they are going to turn out in this midterm election and they are going to vote for people to represent them. I do think that in the wake of the Shelby County decision in 2013, which struck down section five, which the representative referred to, we've been through a lengthy period of instability and election law in people making structural changes to the way that this works that has really left people disenchanted with our system and we'll see what this decision yields. Karim and just a few sentences. Briefly, we've got to have the public that is immune to distraction. It is now time to reform the Supreme Court of the United States and get a congress that's really ready to deal with big questions about reform, like dealing with partisan jury mandering and the protection of people and rules like the Voting Rights Act. I believe our conversation there for now, lots more to watch in the months ahead. That's Karim Creighton, Vice President of the Washington Office of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law and Kerry Levine, Editor-in-Chief of Vote Beat. Thanks to you, Bo. Remember, you can always follow the show on Instagram at the 1A Show. Today's producer was Avery Jessich Haapnick. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd Zwoller. Thanks for listening. Talk more soon. This is 1A. NPR's newest podcast is where you can find NPR's biggest interviews. I'm Steve Inskeep. The program is called Newsmakers. We talk with some of the most powerful and influential people at this moment to put real questions to them and push for real answers. Follow Newsmakers on the NPR app or any podcast player or you can watch on NPR's YouTube channel.