How is the Supreme Court undermining the freedom to vote?

For 60 years, the Voting Rights Act stood as the most powerful tool for protecting voters of color from discrimination at the ballot box. But in a single decision earlier this year, the Supreme Court gutted it and opened the door for states to enact discriminatory voting maps and laws.

On this episode of Democracy Decoded, host Simone Leeper is joined by Gilda Daniels, University of Baltimore law professor, former DOJ attorney, and Of Counsel at Campaign Legal Center;, George Washington University law professor Spencer Overton; and Campaign Legal Center senior vice president Bruce Spiva to examine how the court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais weakened Section 2 of the VRA, and how President Trump's redistricting push is undoing districts that gave communities of color a voice. They also discuss what solutions — from state-level voting rights acts to proportional representation — could help preserve our country’s true, multi-racial democracy.

Episode Highlights:

5:00 – What is the history of America’s multiracial democracy?

7:35 – What made the Voting Rights Act the most successful civil rights law in history?

9:26 – How did Section 2 become the VRA's most vital and embattled protection?

11:27 – What did the Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais actually do?

12:50 – How has partisan gerrymandering been positioned as a loophole for racial discrimination?

16:17 – How did Trump's redistricting push trigger an arms race across states?

18:46 – What happens when voters ban gerrymandering and lawmakers do it anyway?

20:21 – Could proportional representation be the structural reform our democracy needs?

22:03 – Can Americans still reform their democracy when institutions fail to protect it?

25:40 – Does the power to change democracy still belong to the people?

27:06 – What's at stake in the fight for the freedom to vote?

Host and Guests:

Simone Leeper litigates a wide range of redistricting-related cases at Campaign Legal Center, challenging gerrymanders and advocating for election systems that guarantee all voters an equal opportunity to influence our democracy. Prior to arriving at CLC, Simone was a law clerk in the office of Senator Ed Markey and at the Library of Congress, Office of General Counsel. She received her J.D. cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 2019 and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Columbia University in 2016.

Gilda Daniels is a Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. She teaches Election Law, Appellate Advocacy, Federal Courts, Civil Procedure, and Critical Legal Theory, which includes jurisprudence, critical race theory, socioeconomics, and access to justice. Daniels, an expert on voting rights, has served as a deputy chief in the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Voting Section, in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. She has more than twenty years of voting rights experience, bringing cases that involved various provisions of the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act and other voting rights statutes. Before beginning her voting rights career, Daniels was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights, representing death row inmates and bringing prison condition cases. She also serves as Of Counsel at Campaign Legal Center.

Spencer Overton is the Patricia Roberts Harris Research Professor of Law and the founder and faculty director of the Multiracial Democracy Project at GW Law School. The Project is currently working on the implications for multiracial democracy o