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Speaker 1: The Supreme Court today took another stab at what has

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Speaker 1: proved to be a tricky subject, the extent to which

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Speaker 1: politicians may use race as a factor when they draw

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Speaker 1: the lines for voting districts. The Court unanimously revived a

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Speaker 1: challenge by black Virginia voters to eleven state house districts

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Speaker 1: drawn by Republicans. The justices told at lower court to

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Speaker 1: reconsider the districts using a tougher legal test. The districts

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Speaker 1: are designed to have a voting age population of at

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Speaker 1: least fifty five Black. Republicans say they were trying to

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Speaker 1: comply with the nineteen Voting Rights Act and its protections

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Speaker 1: for racial minorities. Democrats say the goal was to delop

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Speaker 1: minority voting cloud and preserve the power of neighboring white Republicans.

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Speaker 1: With us to discuss the new ruling and the many

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Speaker 1: nuances I probably glossed over. Is Nate personally, a professor

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Speaker 1: at Stanford University Law School and an election law expert.

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Speaker 1: Nate um Justice Kennedy Welcome. Justice Kennedy wrote the Court's

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Speaker 1: opinion today. What specifically did he say the lower court

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Speaker 1: did wrong in in upholding these districts? Well, what he

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Speaker 1: said was that the Voting Rights Act may require the

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Speaker 1: consideration of race, but that uh, sometimes a state can

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Speaker 1: go too far, and he remanded to the lower The

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Speaker 1: court remanded to the lower court to figure out whether

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Speaker 1: in in UH eleven of these districts, the state nevertheless

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Speaker 1: used race more than is required under the Voting Rights Act.

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Speaker 1: And in particular, what the court had said below is that, look, uh,

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Speaker 1: these districts were relatively square. They were they were not

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Speaker 1: as misshapen as a kind of your average Gerrymander district.

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Speaker 1: And so therefore I don't have to think about whether

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Speaker 1: race was the predominant factor in the construction of these districts.

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Speaker 1: And the court said, no, no, no, you still have

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Speaker 1: to think about it. Even if it doesn't look like

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Speaker 1: they violated traditional districting principles, you have to ask the

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Speaker 1: question whether the reason that they were drawn was to

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Speaker 1: create majority minority districts. Nate, is this ruling a vic

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Speaker 1: three for Democrats who formed a group, the National Democratic

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Speaker 1: Redistricting Committee, to tackle their disadvantage in Gerrymander districts. I mean,

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Speaker 1: is a victory, but it's not a complete victory. I

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Speaker 1: think that they would have liked the Supreme Court to

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Speaker 1: really decide the issue instead of remanding to the lower courts,

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Speaker 1: and so this case will come right back up to them,

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Speaker 1: uh once, and they will have nine justices at that point,

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Speaker 1: and maybe there will be a different outcome. I think

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Speaker 1: right now this is in some ways that kind of

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Speaker 1: placeholder decision, which is giving the district court time to

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Speaker 1: focus on the question as to the role of that

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Speaker 1: race played in the construction these districts, and uh, the

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Speaker 1: Court really didn't wrestle with what is one of the

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Speaker 1: thorniest issues here, which is sort of the collision between

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Speaker 1: provisions of the Voting Rights Act that require the use

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Speaker 1: of race and the provisions of the Constitution that's say,

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Speaker 1: sometimes you could use race too much in the construction

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Speaker 1: of the district need. I think that probably brings us

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Speaker 1: to the separate opinions written by Justices Thomas and the Leadouh.

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Speaker 1: They would would have gone further, they agree with sending

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Speaker 1: the case back to the lower corporate They would have

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Speaker 1: made the state made at the test of strict scrutiny

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Speaker 1: and even tougher tests than than than I think was

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Speaker 1: articulated by Justice Kennedy. They're the most conservative justices on

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Speaker 1: the Court. So what's what's going on there when they're

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Speaker 1: the ones that say that the Republicans who drew the

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Speaker 1: lines have to do more to justify the way they

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Speaker 1: did that. And that's what I was saying before about

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Speaker 1: how they there is this sort of collision course between

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Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act and um the Constitution here and

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Speaker 1: so letally let me recount this from the standpoint of

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Speaker 1: someone who's drawn districts, as I've done many times from

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Speaker 1: many states, which is that as you are drawing these districts,

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Speaker 1: you have to think about what the Voting Rights Act requires,

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Speaker 1: and you have to make sure you do not dilute

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Speaker 1: the minority population. So you aggressively think about what it's

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Speaker 1: going to take for minority populations to elect their candidates

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Speaker 1: of choice, that's the words in the statute. At the

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Speaker 1: same time that you're making sure you don't die the

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Speaker 1: minority vote, either by packing them into too few districts

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Speaker 1: or spreading them among too many. You have to worry

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Speaker 1: about what the Supreme Court has that the Constitution says,

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Speaker 1: which is that the equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth

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Speaker 1: Amendment prevents you from using race as the predominant factor

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Speaker 1: and so uh, what the the more conservative justices are

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Speaker 1: hinting at is that you know, they are going to

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Speaker 1: apply strict scrutiny whenever race is uh being used in

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Speaker 1: the construction of these districts. And for the most part,

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Speaker 1: that means that these districts are going to fall, that

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Speaker 1: they're going to be unconstitutional for the majority. They try

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Speaker 1: to step around this issue, and they remanned on some

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Speaker 1: significant questions dealing with the role that race played in

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Speaker 1: this process. Is this ultimately going in a direction where

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Speaker 1: we're going to have a challenge to the Voting Rights

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Speaker 1: Act that soft nat We only have about thirty seconds

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Speaker 1: left here. Well, as you know, the Supreme Court did

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Speaker 1: strike down Section five of the Voting Rights Act in

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Speaker 1: this case Shelby County versus Holder a while ago. In

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Speaker 1: some ways, this redistricting plan is a kind of residual

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Speaker 1: fact of the previous incarnation of the Voting Rights Act.

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Speaker 1: But I think it's possible over the long term that

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Speaker 1: some of the justices will have skepticism over the other

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Speaker 1: provisions of the Voting Rights Act, namely Section two of

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Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act, and and in many ways we'll

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Speaker 1: probably see that in the next redistricting cycle. We will

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Speaker 1: look for that. I want to thank Nate personally of

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Speaker 1: Stanford University Law School talking about the Supreme Courts voting

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Speaker 1: district decision today