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Speaker 1: Well, I was time for our daily Bloomberg Law Brief,

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Speaker 1: exploring legal issues in the news. Today, Bloomberg Law Hostum

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Speaker 1: Grosso and Greg's Store discuss a case heard before the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court yesterday which deals with the question of racial

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Speaker 1: bias in redistricting. They speak with Naper silly Or, professor

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Speaker 1: at Stanford University, and Josh Douglas, a professor at the

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Speaker 1: University of Kentucky College of Law. Nate, will you explain

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Speaker 1: the competing considerations the legislators are supposed to take into

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Speaker 1: account with regard to race when redistricting. Well, legislators are

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Speaker 1: under sort of two legal obligations under federal law. One

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Speaker 1: is from the Voting Rights Act, the parts that still remain,

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Speaker 1: which says that you must make sure that minorities have

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Speaker 1: an equal opportunity to elect their can'ts of choice, and

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Speaker 1: that often means that in areas of high minority concentration,

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Speaker 1: you have to draw majority African American majority Latino districts.

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Speaker 1: At the same time, the Constitution prevents states from using

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Speaker 1: race too much. You can't use race as the predominant

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Speaker 1: fact during the construction of a district. And so these

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Speaker 1: cases are in part about how you uh, sort of

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Speaker 1: square that circle? How do you draw a districts that

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Speaker 1: comply with the Voting Rights Act but don't run a

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Speaker 1: foul of the Constitution. Josh, The dynamic in these cases

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Speaker 1: is very different than it was twenty or thirty years ago.

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Speaker 1: It used to be that what you would see would

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Speaker 1: be a minority group or or um uh, minority voters saying, uh,

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Speaker 1: you're not complying with that first thing that Nate was

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Speaker 1: talking about, the Voting Rights Act and not giving us

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Speaker 1: an opportunity to elect representatives of our choice. Now it

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Speaker 1: seems to be that the districts are they're saying, hey,

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Speaker 1: these districts have too many racial minorities in them, more

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Speaker 1: than we actually need. Can you explain why that that

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Speaker 1: evolution has taken place? Yeah, This is known as a

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Speaker 1: phenomenon of called cracking and packing. Uh. And the basic

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Speaker 1: purity is that and particularly what you mentioned putting almost

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Speaker 1: too many minorities in one district. There he goes that

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Speaker 1: if you put as many minorities as possible in one district,

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Speaker 1: they'll have a supermajority, which means they will not have

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Speaker 1: any influence in any of the surrounding districts, and so

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Speaker 1: you've packed them into one uh and made it easy,

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Speaker 1: extremely easy for them to win that one district, but

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Speaker 1: very difficult and impossible for them that them to have

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Speaker 1: an influence in the surrounding areas. And that's been one

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Speaker 1: tactic that some states have used, and some in course

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Speaker 1: have said that that's un awful. That's Josh Douglas, a

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Speaker 1: professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, and

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Speaker 1: Nate for Silly, your professor at Stanford University, speaking with

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg lah Ho stoom Grasso, and Greg Stewart. You can

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Speaker 1: listen to Bloomberg Law weekdays at one pm Wall Street

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Speaker 1: Time here on Bloomberg Radio and Now. Among the top

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Speaker 1: legal stories from Bloomberg Law, call it a you snooze,

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Speaker 1: you lose decision. The Supreme Court won't hear a case

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Speaker 1: involving City Group workers who say they lost retirement savings

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Speaker 1: by investing in cities talk. Last May, a federal appeals

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Speaker 1: court projected the city workers suit. The court said they

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Speaker 1: waited too long to challenge losses tie the city's subprime

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Speaker 1: mortgage investments. The workers appealed, but the Supreme Court decided

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Speaker 1: not to take the case. And that's this morning's Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: Law Brie. If you can find more legal news at

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg law dot com and Bloomberg b NA dot com.

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Speaker 1: Attorneys will find exceptional legal research and business development tools

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Speaker 1: there as well. Visit Bloomberg law dot com and Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: BNA dot com for more information