JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Fallout from the Supreme Court's decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act continues to unfold across the country. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the conservative majority's recent actions risk being viewed as partisan.
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KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: We have to be really, really careful in this environment when we're dealing with issues that have a political overlay. We have to be scrupulous about sticking to the principles and the rules that we apply in every case.
SUMMERS: NPR's Carrie Johnson has been chatting with lawyers about one of those principles. And now she's here in the studio to talk about it. Hi.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Hi there.
SUMMERS: So, Carrie, the Supreme Court decision to invalidate Louisiana's legislative maps has prompted a race to redraw lines in several other Southern states in time for elections this year. But I got to say, the timing seems sort of tight.
JOHNSON: It is. And there's a legal interview - issue right at the center of this debate. It involves something called the Purcell principle, after a Supreme Court case back in 2006. The whole idea is judges should not make changes to voting or election rules too close to an election to prevent chaos for voters. That Purcell case in Arizona 20 years ago involved changes less than three weeks before the election. And the Supreme Court said that would just be too confusing. Since then, the Purcell principles have been used lots of times.
SUMMERS: OK. Remind us what the Louisiana ruling did and why it's so controversial.
JOHNSON: The conservative majority ruled 6-3 to throw out one of the state's maps and weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act. People who want to sue over redistricting will now need to prove lawmakers intended to discriminate on the basis of race. And that's a high bar. And then the high court sped up final action in the case, which normally takes about a month. That allowed legislators in Louisiana to take action right away, just three weeks before the primary election for Congress in that state. That's renewed criticism over the Purcell principle and whether the Supreme Court's violating its own rules. Stanford Law professor Pam Karlan made this joke on the podcast "Divided Argument" last week.
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PAM KARLAN: The Constitution says the United States is supposed to guarantee a republican form of government. But this is not what they meant.
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SUMMERS: And, Carrie, how are other legal scholars weighing in?
JOHNSON: Wilfred Codrington is a professor at Cardozo Law School and an expert in election law. He says it's not clear what counts as too close to an election. Are we talking about registration dates, ballot mailing dates or just Election Day? Here's more from Codrington.
WILFRED CODRINGTON: It is flimsy in practice. And so when it's flimsy in practice and it's applied in ways that consistently, particularly by the Supreme Court, end up benefiting one party over the other.
JOHNSON: He did a study of how the Purcell principle got used during the COVID pandemic. He found in nearly every decision the Supreme Court made, it ended up benefiting Republicans in ways that would depress voter turnout and result in the kind of confusion it purports to prevent. He says justices are not showing their work in most of these cases. And they're not taking seriously the harms that minority voters might suffer.
SUMMERS: How are people defending the Purcell principle?
JOHNSON: I spoke with Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, a group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence.
HANS VON SPAKOVSKY: State legislatures are trying to implement what the Supreme Court has said is the proper interpretation of the Voting Rights Act and the 15th Amendment, which is that you cannot use race in drawing up boundary lines until you first have actually proven a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
JOHNSON: He says the criticism of the high court's conservative majority has been unfair.
SUMMERS: And, Carrie, before we let you go, it does appear that the Supreme Court is not finished with voting issues this term. What can you tell us?
JOHNSON: Well, Alabama Republicans petitioned the Supreme Court today. They want the justices to let them use a congressional map that a lower court had blocked. That lower court said the map discriminated against Black voters and would cause confusion too close to the election. So we're once again right back at the Supreme Court with the same Purcell principle.
SUMMERS: NPR's Carrie Johnson, thank you.
JOHNSON: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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