The framers themselves adopted the Equal Protection Clause, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment, in a race-conscious way.

If we draw racially gerrymandered districts, particularly in a place where you have a small elite group that has cultivated a sociology of racial polarization to benefit themselves

economically.

It seems to me that you're coming here and it's totally your right to do it, but really

saying change the way we look at Section 2 and its application.

You create districts where you basically have white candidates who have to compete as a zero-sum game

for the largest number of white voters.

The only explicit reference to race in the Constitution is in the 15th Amendment, which

prohibits racial discrimination in voting and gives Congress the authority to determine

the contours of what laws are important to prohibit discrimination.

Hi, and welcome back to Slate's amicus podcast. This is a show about the courts, the law,

and the U.S. Supreme Court, which gaveled in the 2022 term this past Monday. I am Dahlia Lithwick. I cover the

High Court and the Law for Slate Magazine. And I also wrote the brand new book, Lady Justice,

about women, the law and how it saves us, but also quite the opposite. And I wrote about the lawyers

who try to bend that seam toward justice.

Today we're going to celebrate the opening of the new term by taking you into two of the oral

arguments heard in the court just this past week, a challenge to the Clean Water Act and a fairly

existential debate over Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Maybe to the extent there's a hot take here at all.

It is that Justice Katanji Brown Jackson is decidedly not going to be sitting around waiting to jump into the fray.

Later on in the show, Slate Plus listeners are going to get a chance to hear Mark Joseph Stern's first take on the new term.

And we're going to talk about Justice Jackson's impact, the Mar-a-Lago case, now headed to the Supreme Court, but possibly destined to sit in the mailroom for a while.

...