Gilda Daniels: We have always had to fight to vote for the right to vote. 

Simone Leeper: This is Gilda Daniels. She's a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and my colleague at Campaign Legal Center where she's of counsel. 

Gilda Daniels: The right has been so fragile, and our community's literacy tests and poll taxes and other disenfranchising mechanisms were certainly meant to target the African American community. My grandmother could not vote until the 1960s. Although we had the Nineteenth Amendment and although we had the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and we have more constitutional amendments that address the right to vote than any other right, she still was not able to vote until we had that piece of legislation, which was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Simone Leeper: Gilda is an expert on the Voting Rights Act. As an attorney at the Department of Justice under Presidents Clinton and Bush, she worked on numerous voting rights cases. More recently, she and other civil rights experts have watched in dread as the Supreme Court chipped away at the VRA. The court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais this spring was the most painful case yet. 

Gilda Daniels: The Louisiana versus Callais decision as well as other decisions, such as Shelby County versus Holder in 2013, the Brnovich decision, and other decisions from this United States Supreme Court have diminished and, in many ways, destroyed the power of the Voting Rights Act, so it was quite devastating. 

Simone Leeper: With this ruling, the court struck down a congressional map that finally enabled Black voters in Louisiana to have the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. More broadly, the justices upended decades of precedent, ignored the will of Congress, and severely undercut one of the major avenues for voters to challenge racially discriminatory maps or voting laws. So how did we get to this point? And more importantly, where do we go from here? 

I'm Simone Leeper, and this is Democracy Decoded, a podcast where we examine our government and discuss innovative ideas that can create a stronger, more transparent, accountable, and inclusive democracy. I work for Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization that, for 25 years, has been leading a campaign to solve the wide range of challenges facing American democracy. 

This season on Democracy Decoded, we're focusing on something that is at the very foundation of our country, but doesn't usually get the splashy headlines, the rule of law. When it works well, we hardly notice it. But when a presidential administration and its allies undermine or outright ignore this constitutionally enshrined cornerstone of our democracy, things start going sideways very quickly for Americans. 

The rule of law ensures all people are subject to the same laws and that those laws are equally enforced, and it preserves the checks and balances that prevent any one branch of government from becoming too powerful. Unfortunately, the first two years of the second Trump administration have brought about a deterioration of the rule of law in our country. We have an executive branch that continually overreaches its authority, issuing a barrage of executive orders and presidential directives that flout federal law and threaten the freedom to vote. So far, the courts have largely held up against Trump's assaults on the Constitution, and voters have been protected, mostly, but the Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais cut deep into those protections. And for lawyers like Gilda Daniels, who grew up in Louisiana no less, it represented a huge step backwards. 

Gilda Daniels: I was an attorney with the Department of Justice. You knew you were representing certainly the people in fighting to enforce federal laws, particularly around voting rights. And to know and understand that that is no longer the case, that it's now the federal government fighting against states or fighting against expanding the ability to vote, this deterioration of the rule of law in our country, it's not just the executive, it's not just Department of Justice, it's the United States Supreme Court, and so it has been very troubling. And as a professor of law, and I teach federal courts, it was also like, " What am I teaching my students?" I can tell them what the law is, and then I tell them what is actually happening, and then we have to figure out how to make sense of it all. Certainly, in this semester, I'm teaching election law. So with the Callais case, we're focusing the course to say, " Okay, that's what the law was. This is what the law is. What can we do about it? How do we use the law to create a more free, fair system?" 

Simone Leeper: Clearly, the Callais decision has had and will continue to have huge impacts on the freedom to vote in this country. But before we dive into the specifics of its effect on the Voting Rights Act, it's worth taking a step back to understand the broader historical landscape. 

Spencer Overton: A true multiracial democracy is so difficult to achieve. The US is still adapting to one of the most profound demographic and political transformations in its history. 

Simone Leeper: This is Spencer Overton. In addition to his role as professor at the George Washington University School of Law, he also directs GW Law's Multiracial Democracy Project. 

Spencer Overton: From its beginning, our laws were designed to create and preserve a predominantly white polity. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited citizenship to, quote, unquote, " free white persons." And for much of our history, immigration laws, citizenship rules, and voting restrictions really worked together to shape who belonged and who held political power. Now, that all dramatically changed in 1965. Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, which eliminated the national origins quota system and opened the door to much greater immigration from Asia, Africa, really outside and beyond Northern Europe and Western Europe. That same year, Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act, which finally gave millions of Americans, and then later many language minority voters, a meaningful opportunity to participate in elections. Those two landmark laws transformed our electorate and our politics. 

In 1960, for example, our country was about 15% people of color. Now, it's over 40%. Back then, the US House of Representatives was only about 2% people of color. Now, it's almost 30%. And so there have just been transformations. The problem is that this change has also generated cultural anxiety. Political scientists like Ashley Jardina have documented how some Americans have developed a stronger sense of white identity and perceived demographic change as a threat to their social or political status, and those concerns have become an important force in contemporary politics. So our challenge is not simply to manage diversity, but to build these democratic institutions that allow these different groups to share power peacefully and govern together. So that's our central challenge here as a nation. 

Simone Leeper: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 went a long way towards securing the guarantee of full citizenship that this country first made to Black Americans during Reconstruction. 100 years after the end of the Civil War, Black Americans and other voters of color finally enjoyed protections as equal participants in democracy. 

Spencer Overton: The Voting Rights Act in 1965 is one of the most successful civil rights laws in American history. It transformed the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment. It made it real. So for nearly a century after Reconstruction, many states used literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, violence, and other tactics to prevent Black Americans and, in many places, other racial and language minority communities from participating equally in elections. The Voting Rights Act gave the federal government powerful tools to stop those practices. It attacked specific barriers that kept people from casting a ballot. It required pre- clearance of changes to election laws to ensure that they weren't discriminatory when those changes were made in certain states. And ultimately, it was interpreted to address barriers that diluted the value of those ballots after they were cast, including election systems that prevented minority communities from electing candidates of their choice. 

Now, the results were extraordinary. Voter registration among people of color increased dramatically across the south, and elected bodies gradually began to look more like the communities they served, and so really an important tool to make democracy real in the United States. 

Simone Leeper: The Voting Rights Act wasn't without its detractors. Yet over the years, lawmakers from both major parties repeatedly updated and strengthened the VRA, making it a living, breathing law. And perhaps its most vital part, Section 2, turned out to be a true survivor, until recently. 

Spencer Overton: Section 2 was one of the most important parts of the Voting Rights Act. It's the principal nationwide protection against racial discrimination in voting. It prohibits voting practices that deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, not only by preventing people from casting ballots, but also by weakening the effectiveness of those ballots. The Supreme Court first recognized that vote dilution in White v. Regester in 1973 holding that election systems could deny minority communities an equal opportunity to elect representatives. But in Mobile versus Bolden in 1980, the court made those claims nearly impossible to bring under the Voting Rights Act by requiring proof that lawmakers acted with discriminatory intent. Congress responded swiftly in the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act. Congress rejected Mobile v. Bolden and made clear that Section 2 focuses on discriminatory results based on the totality of the circumstances, not simply discriminatory motives. Four years later, in a case called Thornburg versus Gingles, the court established the framework that courts have used for decades to determine when district maps or election systems unlawfully dilute minority voting strength. 

More recently, however, the court has steadily narrowed Section 2. In Brnovich versus Democratic National Committee, the court adopted new limitations on vote denial claims that make it harder to challenge discriminatory voting rules. And now, with the court's recent decision in Callais, the court has taken another major step in making it much more difficult to challenge district maps that dilute minority voting strength. So the court has not overruled Section 2, but it has increasingly narrowed how the statute operates in practice. That's why so many voting rights advocates see Callais as the culmination of a long effort to weaken one of our nation's most important civil rights laws. 

Simone Leeper: The John Roberts- led Supreme Court handed down its 6- 3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais on April 29th, 2026. As many court observers feared, it substantially weakened Section 2, the portion of the VRA that protects historically underrepresented communities from gerrymandered districts and electoral systems that dilute their votes. Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion. 

Spencer Overton: This was one of the most consequential decisions in decades, not because the court formally overturned Section 2, but it made it extraordinarily difficult to enforce Section 2. The majority essentially said that if lawmakers can explain a map as serving partisan goals, courts should be reluctant to conclude that race played an impermissible role. 

Gilda Daniels: In this situation, the court is saying, " Yes, racial discrimination exists, but not enough." And if the legislature says they were drawing it because of partisanship, the court says, " Okay." It gives them a free pass. Simone Leeper: Campaign Legal Center's Gilda Daniels once again. Gilda Daniels: Because they've made the bar so high, essentially they've said that you have to have an intentional finding, and finding an intent to discriminate is very difficult because we don't have the dogs and the water hoses and the smoking guns certainly that we had during the 1950s and certainly 1960s. Even though there is racial discrimination, the level of racial discrimination, they're saying, unless it rises to the level of intentional discrimination, then it's not actionable. 

Spencer Overton: In much of the country, race and partisanship are highly correlated. Politicians know that. So allowing legislatures to defend maps by pointing to politics really creates an enormous loophole. 

And let me just kind of go back. When, in Selma, they prevented Black folks from voting using literacy tests, et cetera, it wasn't just that they were Black. There was a political reason. The political reason was they wanted to maintain segregation, and they were afraid that Black people would vote against politicians who upheld segregation. There were political motives in disenfranchising. You wanted to shape the outcome. So this notion that politics and race are somehow completely separate, that's just wrong. I just think that they gave legislatures a roadmap for dismantling districts. They gave minority communities a meaningful opportunity to elect candidates of their choice and just basically claim that they're pursuing partisan objectives. The practical consequence is that many voters of color may lose representation even though Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act specifically to prevent the kind of vote dilution that frankly is happening throughout the country and has happened throughout the country since the decision here. I think that the opinion is much less about one Louisiana map and fundamentally about changing the rules governing redistricting across the country. 

Simone Leeper: For Professor Overton, like Gilda, the court's decision in Callais landed as more than just a disappointing legal result. For 60 years, this law had protected them and the people in their communities from being shunted to the margins of American democracy. When Alito, Roberts, and four other justices gutted the VRA, Professor Overton felt the loss intimately. 

Spencer Overton: It was like a relative who might be terminally ill had passed. You know it's coming in terms of the composition of this court, but there's still some mourning involved. You're still sad about it, you're still affected by it, not just because of the voting rights of Black folks, but really because of our nation as a whole and what this represents in terms of the future of multiracial democracy. 

Bruce Spiva: There are in a lot of places in this country redistricting shenanigans that make it harder to elect the people's candidates of choice. 

Simone Leeper: This is Bruce Spiva. Bruce is a voting rights lawyer and senior vice president of Campaign Legal Center. He explained that not only has the Callais decision undermined the fight for the freedom to vote in fair maps in this country, but that President Trump has also gotten involved. 

Bruce Spiva: The president started a redistricting arms race in 2025, calling out to several Republican- controlled states, starting with Texas, to redistrict their congressional districts mid- decade, which is highly unusual. In Texas, that resulted in a discriminatory map that undermined the ability of communities of color to elect their representatives of choice, both the Latino community in Texas and the African American community, undoing several districts that had previously provided those communities with the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice and, at the same time, provided what the legislature and the president intended to be a partisan advantage as well. The president has called out to several more states that have heeded that call, including Missouri and Florida, which has redrawn a map which was already gerrymandered to make it even more favorable to the Republican Party in Florida. In turn, several democratic- controlled states have responded. Many of them had adopted reforms like Independent Redistricting Commissions and bans on partisan gerrymandering. And so they have also engaged in that battle, essentially a race to the bottom. 

Simone Leeper: This is the state of play for voting rights in redistricting in 2026. The Supreme Court is greenlighting racial vote dilution just as states are carving up their congressional maps. Texas went first at the president's urging. In response, California redrew its maps to try to send more Democrats to Congress. Then Republican lawmakers in North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Missouri moved to follow Texas's lead. Donald Trump and some lawmakers have cheered the power grab, but no one else seems to like it. Voters in firmly red states, such as Utah and Florida, have passed measures to ban this kind of gerrymandering, only to see lawmakers in those states try it anyway. 

Bruce Spiva: The people don't like partisan gerrymandering. They want to be able to choose their representatives rather than the representatives choosing their voters, and so we've seen in some very red states, including Utah, where we've been very active in fighting for the rights of the people of Utah to amend their constitution and have that hold to eliminate partisan gerrymandering there, and in Florida, which, over 15 years ago, the people passed an amendment to the Florida Constitution banning partisan gerrymandering. We've seen this in blue states and in red states that the people don't want this. It's the politicians that want this, and as we've seen in Utah, sometimes attempt to insist on this multiple times, trying to overrule the will of their own people in banning partisan gerrymandering. We've been at the forefront in court fighting for the right of the people to maintain that, and luckily in Utah, we have done that. 

The fight continues in Florida. We'll see where that leads. Certainly, the words of the Florida Constitution are clear that partisan gerrymandering is not allowed. But as with the United States Supreme Court, sometimes the words are only as good as the courts that are interpreting them. 

Spencer Overton: We need really structural reforms that reduce the incentive to manipulate district lines in the first place and allow voters, not map makers, to determine who earns representation. 

Simone Leeper: In searching for solutions that empower voters, America might do well to look to other democracies. Professor Overton explains that one antidote to gerrymandering could be proportional representation. In that electoral system, voters select multiple leaders in a district. The makeup of those winners is based on their share of votes cast. 

Spencer Overton: Proportional representation makes it very difficult to gerrymander district lines to shape and determine outcomes. It essentially means that your group's share of the vote is roughly equal to the share of seats that you win in the legislature. So if your group votes together and they account for a third of the voters in the state, they're going to get about a third of the congressional seats and a third of the state legislative seats. It's race- neutral, so it's not like we have to draw districts based on race. So it's really inherently fair. Scores of democracies around the world, over half, use some form of proportional representation. It's a way for different groups to share power and govern together as opposed to a winner- take- all election where you can kind of manipulate rules so that one party has a majority of the districts and they have 100% of the power. 

Simone Leeper: So there are solutions to the current situation, but it will take a lot of work on the part of all of us to make them happen. And all across the country, we can see that work taking place. There's hope at the federal level where lawmakers are working to get stronger voter protections on the books. It may take some time, but Congress has the power to act. Litigators are also continuing to utilize existing state and federal law, like the ban on partisan gerrymandering in Florida or the US Constitution's protections against racial gerrymandering and intentional discrimination to advocate for fair electoral systems. States are also stepping up to offer broader protections to voters. 11 states to date have passed their own State Voting Rights Acts, and lawmakers in 11 other states have introduced state VRAs. Additionally, programs such as Campaign Legal Center's Restore Your Vote are helping individuals with past felony convictions understand their voting rights while also working with local partners across the country to help pass laws that end felony disenfranchisement. 

From providing direct support to individual voters navigating the rights restoration process, to using legal advocacy and organizing tools to dismantle felony disenfranchisement, this work is making an impact for many Americans. 

Spencer Overton: We often talk about democracy as though it's either healthy or broken, and in reality, democracy is always a work in progress. 

Simone Leeper: Professor Overton of GW Law. 

Spencer Overton: The United States is more diverse than at any point in our history. That's one of our greatest strengths, but it also means we need democratic institutions that help people with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives share power rather than compete for permanent dominance. Too often, our political debates focus on personalities, the next election, or the horse race between the two parties. Yeah, those conversations matter, but they can distract us from a more important question. Have we designed institutions that encourage representation, accountability, and cooperation? If the answer is no, we shouldn't be afraid to improve those institutions. 

Now, I'm optimistic because Americans have repeatedly shown that we're capable of reforming our democracy. We've amended the constitution, we've expanded the franchise, we've strengthened civil rights protections, and we've built institutions that previous generations thought were impossible. We can do that again. Democratic institutions are strongest when people believe the rules are applied consistently. So the rule of law does play a critical role, but the future of American democracy won't be determined solely by judges or politicians. It'll be determined by whether citizens are willing to imagine institutions that better reflect the country we've become and then do the hard work of building those institutions. 

Bruce Spiva: We at Campaign Legal Center will be advocating and fighting for reforms to our laws that make it so that every voter, regardless of race or ethnicity, can vote and have their vote counted so that they can vote in fair districts, which allow them a fair opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. 

Simone Leeper: Bruce Spiva, once again. 

Bruce Spiva: And of course, laws that limit the influence of big money in politics and for a more ethical government free from corruption, we will continue to fight for that in the courts and in the legislatures. What gives me hope is that I think that the American people still believe in democracy, and that ultimately that they will insist on these types of changes and protections. 

Gilda Daniels: I just want people to understand that we still have the power, that the power is certainly with the people, and we need to exercise that power. 

Simone Leeper: Gilda Daniels, once again. 

Gilda Daniels: I still believe in the rule of law, but I also recognize that there is a fight for democratic values. If we had people who turned out at more than 35% during a midterm election, what might our democracy look like, or during a presidential election if people turn out at more than 60%? So if we actually would realize the power that we have and then use it not only through registering and casting a ballot, but also by getting more involved with the democratic process and even, in many respects, people considering running for office themselves to ensure that they are being truly represented. So I just want people to remember that we have the power not to lose hope and to just continue the fight, because there is a fight to vote for the right to vote, and a fight to create certainly the world that we want to live in, not only for ourselves, but for our children and our children's children. 

Simone Leeper: It can be easy to get discouraged about American democracy in 2026. The president of the United States sets off a redistricting arms race, the Supreme Court hands a blueprint for racial discrimination to state lawmakers, but our democracy has never been a straight line. It has always been an iterative process built gradually on the efforts of Americans who came before us. It took nearly 200 years to protect the vote for Black Americans and other voters of color, for naturalized immigrants, and for women. Those fights continue. So now, it's our turn to put in the effort to restore the rule of law our democracy depends on and to pass a more perfect union along to future generations. 

Next time on Democracy Decoded, we'll be discussing the results and ramifications of the midterm elections. 

This season of Democracy Decoded is produced by JAR Podcast Solutions for Campaign Legal Center. 

Campaign Legal Center is a nonpartisan legal organization dedicated to solving the wide range of challenges facing American democracy. For a quarter century, Campaign Legal Center has been leading a campaign for democracy in courtrooms and capitols across the country, a campaign for voting rights and fair representation, a campaign to hold our government and elected officials accountable, a campaign to limit the corrosive influence of big money in our elections, and a campaign for the rule of law, so every American can participate meaningfully in the democratic process. 

Today, the threats to our democracy go beyond anything we could have imagined when we first opened our doors. During this pivotal time for our democracy, Campaign Legal Center needs support to continue to fight on behalf of the American people. Your tax- deductible donation directly funds our efforts to do just that. If you would like to support our work, visit campaignlegal.org and click on the Donate button. To learn more about Restore Your Vote, visit restoreyourvote.org. 

Special thanks to our guests, Gilda Daniels, Spencer Overton, and Bruce Spiva. I'm your host, Simone Leeper. Thanks so much for listening. If you've learned something new today, find us on your podcast platform of choice and hit Subscribe. You'll get updates as we release new episodes. 

Leading this production for Campaign Legal Center are Casey Atkins, multimedia manager, and Madeleine Greenberg, communications associate. This podcast was produced by Sam Eifling. Editing and mixing by Luke Batiot. 

Democracy Decoded is a member of the Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to engaging in civil discourse, inspiring civic engagement, and exploring the future of our democracy. You can learn more at democracygroup.org.