Voting Rights, But Mainly for White People
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 October 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
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Summary
Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund argued in defense of the Voting Rights Act in the pivotal Supreme Court case, Louisiana v Callais this week. Nelson joins Dahlia Lithwick on this episode of Amicus to probe the implications of the case for voting rights around the country, and the role of the Supreme Court in a democratic system. Nelson warns that while the consequences of losing Section 2 would be catastrophic, t many Americans are unaware how much of their democracy is undergirded by the rights accorded in the 14th and 15th amendments, and effectuated by the Voting Rights Act. Their conversation delves into the historical context of voting rights, the importance of precedent, and the unfinished, but essential, struggle for racial justice in America.
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Transcript
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| 1:05.6 | This is Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court. |
| 1:11.2 | I'm Dahlia Let'sway. |
| 1:13.1 | The Voting Rights Act is the birth certificate of our democracy. |
| 1:23.8 | Louisiana v. Kelle is probably the most important case of the term and surely the most important variable concerning the future of multiracial democracy. |
| 1:35.9 | It's also one of those really thickety cases that dredges up decades of voting rights precedent, constitutional powers, swirling congressional maps, |
| 1:46.6 | and so very much law that it can be hard to comprehend the enormity of what is on the chopping |
| 1:52.6 | block in terms of the Voting Rights Act and almost equally hard to comprehend the ways in which |
| 1:58.6 | the Supreme Court charged with interpreting and enforcing the law as written and precedent as created, plans to eviscerate it. |
| 2:07.8 | Arguments in Kelle took place over almost three hours at SCOTUS on Wednesday, and while I doubt many tuned in for all of it, the stagecraft was such that you could be forgiven if you got |
| 2:19.9 | lost in the pretense that this was all a really hard and thorny new question. This is not a hard |
| 2:26.4 | and thorny new question. For all the obstruction and occlusion, something important may be about |
| 2:33.2 | to happen to the Voting Rights Act, and it is our |
| 2:36.1 | obligation to name it and to explain it and to lay out the stakes. To do that today, I'm joined by |
... |
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