'If You Can Keep It': The Realities Of Supreme Court Reform

Public trust in the Supreme Court is at a 30-year low, according to Pew Research Center. For some, this month marked a turning point in perceptions of its legitimacy.

The court recently ruled in Louisiana v. Callais. Its decision undermined a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that protected minority voters and sought to prevent racial discrimination in elections.

Following the court’s ruling, Tennessee’s GOP-controlled legislature passed a new congressional map, dismantling the state’s majority-Black district. The map gives Republicans a competitive advantage in all nine districts ahead of the state’s midterms. Other red states are now scrambling to redraw their congressional maps as well.

Justice Samuel Alito justified the court’s ruling by claiming that Black voter turnout, both nationwide and in Louisiana, exceeded white voter turnout in two of the five recent presidential elections, writing that the kind of discrimination the Voting Rights Act was designed to prevent no longer exists.

However, reporting from The Guardian found that Alito’s claim was based on misleading data from the Justice Department.

As trust in the Supreme Court continues to remain low, calls for reform grow. In this installment of our weekly politics series, “If You Can Keep It,” we unpack what that reform might actually look like and what’s at stake for our democracy if it doesn’t happen.

Find more of our programs online. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy