CNN’s Elie Honig Warns Supreme Court Voting Rights Act Ruling ‘Certainly Will’ Impact Midterms

CNN’s chief legal analyst, Elie Honig, warned on Wednesday that the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier in the day “certainly will” impact the upcoming midterm elections as states are likely to scramble to redraw their congressional maps – eliminating majority-minority districts.

Guest anchor Manu Raju introduced Honig with a quick explanation of the ruling, “Their 6-3 decision narrows a core piece of the Voting Rights Act and could make it easier for GOP-controlled states to draw maps that eliminate majority-minority districts.”

“The case centers on two majority-black districts in Louisiana, one of which state Republicans sought to eliminate. Louisiana’s secretary of state says she is currently analyzing the court’s opinion, but it could upend the political map nationwide as both parties race to redraw the lines and gain an edge before Election Day, which is now just over six months away. I want to get right to CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig. Elie, how sweeping is this decision and could it impact this year’s midterms?” Raju continued.

“For sure, Manu, I think it certainly will. So the core bottom-line holding of the Supreme Court today is that it is unconstitutional for states to draw congressional maps with the intent to create majority-black or majority-other racial minority districts,” Honig replied, adding:

Now there’s a little bit of history that’s relevant here to understand what happened. Louisiana has six congressional districts in the US House. And after the 2020 election, Louisiana first drew a map that had one majority-black district. By the way, the total population of Louisiana is about one-third black.

Now that was challenged and found to violate the Voting Rights Act because it did not adequately represent the black population of the state. Louisiana then went back to the drawing board. They came up with a new map that had two majority-black districts. That was then challenged and went all the way up to the Supreme Court today, and the Supreme Court said that two-district map is unconstitutional because it discriminates on the basis of race. Now, let me read you sort of the key holdings today.

This was a six-to-three opinion with the six conservatives striking down Louisiana’s two-district map and the three liberals dissenting. Now, the majority opinion was written by Justice Alito. Here’s something that he wrote in the opinion. He wrote that ‘Section Two of the Voting Rights Act was designed to enforce the Constitution, not collide with it. Unfortunately, the lower courts have sometimes applied this court’s precedents in a way that forces states to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids, meaning the Voting Rights Act, if it collides with the anti-discrimination provisions in the Constitution, the Constitution wins out. You cannot discriminate on the basis of race.’

In dissent, Justice Kagan wrote this. She wrote, ‘I dissent then from the latest chapter in the majority’s now completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act. I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.’

So Justice Kagan and the dissenters are saying Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, that was intended to protect the rights and the voice of minority voters, and now we are disregarding that. With respect to other states, mind you, we’ve already seen Florida and Mississippi take steps to try to redraw their maps to eliminate some of these majority-black districts, which will almost certainly have the effect of swinging seats over from Democratic toward Republican-leaning.

Raju replied, “Yeah, and it can maybe help the Florida Republicans if that effort is challenged in court, it seems.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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