Race and the map

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 30th of April. So glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. 

Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up, the Supreme Court hands down decisions in two cases that have made headlines.

REICHARD: In First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Davenport, a unanimous win for a nonprofit pregnancy care center battling an onerous subpoena request from New Jersey’s Attorney General.

Constitutional scholar with the Manhattan Institute Ilya Shapiro says the ruling finds the pregnancy care center has standing to go to court:

SHAPIRO: Has standing to go to federal court and try to block that subpoena. That's it. It did not rule on the merits of the subpoena or the merits of the organization's objections to it.

BROWN: The ruling’s core is that compelled disclosure can chill constitutional rights.

SHAPIRO: Donors aren't going to want to donate if they think that they're going to be disclosed and doxxed and what have you, so of course you have standing to go to court and try to quash that subpoena.

The opinion clarifies when constitutional injury happens.

SHAPIRO: First Amendment speech association injury happens when the demand is made, so there's already a chill when the subpoenas went out. The State Attorney General tried to say, “Oh, well, I sent the subpoenas, but I haven't actually tried to enforce them yet.” Look, donors are going to be chilled. ….regardless of whether there's technically an enforcement action pending or not.

REICHARD: Court watchers see it as striking in that this is a unanimous ruling in the politically sensitive context of abortion. 

The justices focussed on the broad principle that governments must have a legitimate, compelling reason to demand sensitive information from nonprofits.

SHAPIRO: I think the court is wary of overreaching and fishing expeditions, or perhaps punitive investigative subpoenas by state attorneys general of any partisan stripe.

In the next decision in Louisiana v Callais, the court struck down a 2024 redistricting map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Constitutional law professor Josh Blackman:

BLACKMAN: The Supreme Court today said, no, you can't do that. The act of segregating people based on race, even to try to promote minority representation is a violation of the Voting Rights Act. And that trying to... ensure you have this majority-minority representation is not a legitimate reason to engage in this sort of racial splicing.

BROWN: For years, lower courts interpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to require minority districts under certain conditions. 

But the Court says complying with the Act doesn’t justify racial line-drawing:

BLACKMAN: Oh, this is a landmark ruling. For at least the last 40 years or so, governments across the country have been required to create these majority minority districts. And Louisiana, you know it's a deep red state, was forced to basically create a second district where Black voters can elect a Democrat. 

And the Supreme Court said today that, no, you can't take people in this fashion. I mean, if you look at the actual map, it basically stretches up from Shreveport, which is on the border of basically almost Texas and Arkansas, all the way down to Baton Rouge, which is the capital of the state. So it's completely disparate people that have nothing in common except their skin color. And the court says that you can't require Louisiana to do this.

REICHARD: The ruling does not say the Voting Rights Act is itself unconstitutional; instead, it limits how states might try to comply with it and emphasizes that race cannot be the predominant factor in district line drawing.

The three dissenting justices expressed great consternation at the majority opinion, with Justice Elena Kagan writing, “I dissent…from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

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