Instant Reaction: Supreme Court Curbs Use of Race in Drawing Voting Districts

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1:59Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. This is a breaking news update from Bloomberg. Instant reaction and analysis from our 3 ,000 journalists and analysts around the world. Supreme Court ruling today curbs the use of race in drawing voting districts. Let's get some perspective on what all this means. June Grasso is our legal analyst at Bloomberg here. June, talk to us about just the background of this case and then maybe what we may know about this ruling here. So, I mean, the Voting Rights Act has been under fire for, you know, such such a long time. And the Roberts Court has been very receptive to sort of destroying.

2:46I'll use the word destroying the Voting Rights Act in 2018. I believe it was they they took one part of the act, which required preclearance. Clearance. Certain states that had a history, considered to have a history of racism, Texas, etc., certain states in the South would have to get preclearance before they redistricted, before their plans were approved. They took away that. And now this is really the other significant part of the Voting Rights Act, the remaining part of the Voting Rights Act, which was passed in 1965 to address discrimination against black votes. And I'll just read a line from what the dissenting opinion of Justice Elena Kagan, the three liberals who are in dissent, said.

3:29Under the court's new view of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens' voting power. Of course, the majority does not announce today's holding that way, but it's understated, even antiseptic. So, I mean, this is really consequential and it's consequential for, I think, the Republicans, you know, holding the House. If some of this if some of these states can redistrict before the midterms. I mean, I don't know if that would be possible as far as timing, but it really it really is consequential for for voting rights. And the court has, you know, systematically the years you hear them say, well, you know, we're so far away from the time of the Voting Rights Act.

4:17And there isn't I mean, I think Justice Roberts was the one who said in Shelby County, you know, we don't have that kind of discrimination anymore. So we don't. And how long can we keep doing this? How long can we keep having these rules that prioritize, you know, race in voting districts? So it's I think it's it's a stunning decision, although the court has been heading in this way for a long time. I think a lot of people hope that they wouldn't get to it at this point. But so, you know, it's really consequential. It's consequential. And you go back to the Voting Rights Act that you mentioned and how this is kind of part of the dismantling of it.

4:53What is left of the Voting Rights Act right now? You know, I don't think there's much left of it. I have to get an expert because the two biggest sections were the section that was eliminated or gutted in the Shelby County case and then this section. So I don't think there's much left of the Voting Rights Act. How are districts drawn up in the first place? I mean, that's my question. That is a great question. Gerrymandering? Have you seen some of the, like, even if you look in Louisiana, in order to keep the House speaker in a Republican district, you know, they have these odd shapes that you would never imagine, you know, different kinds of weird shapes so they can get in people that they want.

5:37It's political at this point. It's, you know, and, you know, the Democratic states do it as well. The Republican states do it as well. And it's, you know, it's just the. But my old district in New Jersey, which we've since moved from, I finally saw it on a drawn somewhere and it was unbelievably. It's just a bunch of squiggly lines everywhere. How did they figure that out? Because having lived there, like, that's not how I think of my area. My area is this town, this town, this town. You know, no, it's been cherry picked. I mean, they have people who do this for a living, you know, and they have also they have all kinds of, you know, electronic ways of doing it.

6:12But if you looked at this, I mean, the one in Louisiana looks like a sliver up the coast. But all the states. And the only thing that has happened is, but only in Democratic states, they've had maps drawn by commissions. So in that way, you get a fair map because it's drawn by a commission with maybe equal representatives. But only Democratic states have done that, and that's put them in a bad position, which is why you have some states like California redistricting in a different way, not using the commission. So the way to do it is to have a commission. But when you let Republicans or Democrats do it, they're going to do it to their own advantage.

6:54And it's so easy for them to draw maps and just eliminate certain minority populations. It's a mess, really. It's just a mess. Let me ask a really dumb question. When the Supreme Court makes a ruling like this, people jump into action right away, right? I mean, this has immediate consequences? Well, yeah. Well, I think what will happen is, yes, states will start looking at this and deciding what to do. And Louisiana certainly is going to jump into action. Yeah, because what they're going to do is, you know, the politics of it, they're going to start looking at their maps and seeing what they can do and how they can use their power as legislators to redraw the maps.

7:35I mean, I just think this is opening up a can of worms that, you know, the implications are just are just crazy, I think, as far as as what's going to happen next. Because, you know, we see that what's happening in Florida is trying to redraw its maps without even this decision. So, you know, we've come to the point where are we going to have Democratic states with all Democratic districts and Republican states with all Republican districts? It's just it's sort of mind boggling. I'm still stunned by this. Does this change any of what California voters just decided or what Virginia voters decided?

8:11No, I don't. I don't think this has anything to do with that because that was a separate. I think that California didn't the California Texas passed the Supreme Court. I think California may have passed the Supreme Court as well. They're saying that wasn't based on race. That was based on politics. And it's OK to gerrymander based on politics. So think about that. Think of it's OK to gerrymander based on politics. So, you know, Republicans and Democrats are fine. They're allowed to go in and gerrymander based on politics. Before this decision, it was just you couldn't gerrymander based on race.

8:43And now you can gerrymander basically based on race, no matter what the Supreme Court said in its majority opinion. What's left for the Supreme Court this session here? I mean, this was a big one. Yeah, the big case, the case that we're waiting for at Bloomberg is the case of the attempted firing by President Trump of Lisa Cook, the Fed Reserve governor. And the thing is that every week that it's opinion day, we expect that case to come out because it was argued so long ago and because it seemed like the justices were on board with not allowing her to be fired. But it's taking so long that you start to wonder what's happening.

9:23Is it because they were writing a lot of concurrences and dissents? You know, why is it because they're having a hard time distinguishing as they want to the Fed chair from other other board members that he's fired? So is that what's taking them long? Are they just holding it? That's what I think. I think they're just good programmers and they're holding their juiciest one for the year. They say they don't. But I don't I really don't believe that because it's it's no coincidence that all these controversial cases come down the last day of the term. So when is the last day of the term? Well, it it's a movable date.

10:00OK, it used to be the very end of June and then they would go on vacation. But it's now we've had a couple of times where it went into July because they couldn't get their stuff finished and they had so many late breaking opinions. opinions. There used to be, I mean, there's a story about a justice that used to have his car waiting outside the court the last day so they could drive him to his vacation spot. Then they all disappear and go to different locations for the summer. I want to bring in Michael McKee, covers all the economics and international aspects of our reporting for Bloomberg. Boy, we just had a Supreme Court ruling, which has obviously political ramifications for this country, maybe economics as well.

10:44What's your initial take of the Supreme Court ruling here? Well, the ruling sets the stage for states to redraw congressional districts. But the question is, do they have time to do that? In some states where they have a number of black majority districts, it's already too late because filing deadlines for primaries have already passed. The issue is how many states could still do it. One expects that Louisiana would try. But the question, the secondary question is then how far do they get with this? Because if you draw the districts, you know somebody is going to complain to the courts about it.

11:20It goes back into the court system to question whether the new maps are discriminatory in one way or another. It does have a long-term foundational impact, however, in that it dilutes minority voting power in the sense that you can't create a district that is basically guaranteed to elect a minority. And that would be a question of disenfranchisement for a lot of people. And the kind of deal that many states made that they would never admit is that we'll give you your own minority district and then we will be able to use the rest of the state for our own white majority districts and most states Republican districts.

12:01So at this point, there could be a shift in the balance of power in some states once they can get around to actually changing their congressional districts. Boy, this gets messy really quickly. that's that's the net effect of this kind of decision was this a surprise the way that supreme court ruled no it's not at all uh in fact uh legal and political analysts had been expecting this for quite some time the court has uh not liked the voting rights act for many years chief justice roberts has said that uh while it was useful at one time it cannot be permanent law because many Many of the states and many of the aspects of the Voting Rights Act have been, you'd say, cured, taken care of.

12:45People can vote. Poll taxes are gone. That sort of thing. So they've been gutting it one section at a time. This is section two, and now it is gone. So the Voting Rights Act itself is not worth much anymore. But that was expected, and that's why you have a lot of lawyers, especially on the Democratic side waiting to pounce on any new districts redrawn to see if they can make the case that they discriminate in one way or another and aren't fair.

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