Hello and welcome to the Cato podcast.

I'm Tommy Berry, the Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy Director for Constitutional Studies, and I'm joined by...

Walter Olson, I'm a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

And today we're talking gerrymandering, redistricting, contentious political issues, brought to the fore by a few

big stories recently, most notably on my beat, the Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana

versus Calais, interpreting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a controversial provision that

the Supreme Court has tackled many times, but this decision will definitely

change the way it approaches it going forward. And it's not just a statutory decision. It's also a

decision with constitutional implications. So what basically did the Supreme Court hold in this decision?

Well, Calais was a much anticipated decision, and almost everyone correctly surmised that

the court was going to move the law on race and redistricting in a more conservative or

color blonde.

Colorblind's probably a better way to put it direction, but they didn't know whether

it was going to just nudge it a little bit or very substantially reorganized it.

And it was more on the substantial end. It was a big decision that will have a lot of effects

and also changes the principle framework of race and redistricting. And over many decisions, over many years,

the court had settled into a not a very clear set of rules, but nonetheless, one which had a clear

implication for state strong lines, which is that you needed to look out for race,

you needed to look for possible minority choice districts, districts in which blacks in particular,

although other groups might be involved, had the chance to elect a candidate of choice, and the language here can get a little difficult to parse,

but the idea was that both at the primary stage and at the general stage,

that if black voters would have to have a chance to elect someone of their pleasure, not

...