'Does That Contribute To A Crisis?': Johnson Asks Law Professor About SCOTUS's Voting Rights Rulings

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]We now go to the ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Georgia, for 5 minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Professor Bowie, the Supreme Court's recent decision in Louisiana versus Callais represents the culmination of a decades-long campaign led in part by Chief Justice Roberts to dismantle the Voting Rights Act. From Shelby County to Brnovich and now Callais, there has been a systemic and systematic effort to substitute judicial skepticism for Congress's explicit constitutional authority to protect the right to vote. Professor Bowie, how does the Callais decision compare to the Supreme Court's treatment of Reconstruction era protections in the initial passage of the Voting Rights Act?

[00:00:52]And it's directly related because for the first century after Congress proposed the 15th Amendment to protect the right of people to vote and to prohibit states from violating that right on account of race, the Supreme Court interpreted the 15th Amendment to prohibit only laws that it thought had the intent of discriminating on the basis of race.

[00:01:14]And applying that test, the court allowed literacy tests, poll taxes, and all sorts of other state laws to effectively disenfranchise all black people or nearly all in the south.

[00:01:27]When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, its goal was to overcome those decisions and instead apply an effects test or something that said when a state law has the effect of making it more difficult for people of color or any other group to vote on account of their race, then that is illegal.

[00:01:47]When the Supreme Court interpreted that law in the 1980s, it said that actually what Congress did was apply the same sort of intent test. You have to prove that a state legislature intended to discriminate against black people. And Congress again said, "No, you're getting this wrong. We think the problem is all of these laws that have the effect of making it more difficult for people to vote." And what happened in the recent decision just a few weeks ago is the court said, "No, we think what we we think what Congress actually did was apply the same test that we've applied for generations that's had the effect of making it far more difficult for people of color to vote." And we're seeing the consequences right now as every southern state considers laws to take away representation in Congress that's currently occupied by black or Hispanic representatives.

[00:02:38]Many Americans increasingly view the court as acting less like a neutral judicial body and more like a political institution advancing a a particular ideological agenda. When the court repeatedly invalidates laws enacted through the democratic process to expand voting rights and representation, does that contribute to a crisis of legitimacy of the institution itself?

[00:03:09]I think it does in the sense that what people expect from the Supreme Court is what Congress has asked the court to take an oath to do before anyone can become a justice, which is to apply the law without fear or favor to rich and poor alike.

[00:03:26]And when people look at the kinds of rulings coming out of the court that seem to systematically favor one party or the wealthy or corporations or any number of people on a pretty predictable basis, just knowing kind of what is going on in the case before the court even issues a decision, I think it does have an effect on what people think the court is in effect doing. I agree with my colleagues on this panel that to the extent what people think the court is doing is simply issuing truth social posts, then no one will take it seriously.

[00:04:01]The court's power comes from the idea that what the justices are doing is different from what you are all doing as politicians.

[00:04:11]But when all of the evidence and all of the public information about the court suggests that actually the same kinds of policy decisions are happening on the bench that are happening in Congress, it becomes very difficult to treat the court as a different kind of institution than your esteemed body. Thank you. If the court continues to narrow Congress's ability to protect voting rights under the reconstruction amendments, what does that mean for the balance of powers as envisioned by our Constitution and for the future of multiracial democracy in this country?

[00:04:46]The Constitution is ours to interpret as Americans. It is a document for all of us, and people have marched and protested and died in order for the Constitution to reflect that we are a democracy, we should protect the ability of all of us who can vote to do so, and that we should not tolerate laws that make it more difficult for people for people to access the ballot. When the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution to say that that kind of rule is not constitutional, that the 15th Amendment when it specifically empowers Congress to adopt appropriate legislation, but that a law as fundamental as the Voting Rights Act is not appropriate, that is a misreading of the document that we do not have to accept because if we do, the consequence is going to be the end of our ability to govern ourselves and the end of our ability to enact voting protections.

[00:05:40]Thank you. With that, I yield back. The gentleman yields.