The Constitution in Modern America
Presenters: Michael Spivey, Robert Khoulish, Patrick Wohlfarth
This talk occured in Prince George's Room in the Stamp Student Union on September 17, 2025
I got to hear the discussion of three main topics and their relation to the constitution: interpretation of the constitution, voter rights & suppression, and gerrymandering/redistricting. First, I heard that some things in the constitution are a lot more general than others. For example, there has been no debate around what the minimum age to be president is. It is outlined to be 35 years old. However, questions like "Can the President ignore court orders?" (for example, the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia) connects to the first main topic I heard, the interpretation of the constitution.
As we are talking about modern America, most of the supreme court has conservative justices which interpret the constitution through a lens of originalism: the 1787 interpretation. When talking about constitutional acts one notable discussion I heard was on the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Some notable parts include section 2 which prevents any practice that denies or dilutes voting based on race (such as the literacy tests), and sections 4b & 5 which identifies states & governments which have had exclusionary devices to control voting and required them to obtain federal approval before making changes. The VRA was very successful, the racial voting gap on average fell from 30% to 7% and in Mississippi fell from 59% to 7%. However, in 2013 a 5-4 vote declared section 4b of the VRA unconstitutional and I learned that this also renders section 5 useless. As Sotomayor and Ginsburg predicted, states started implementing new voter suppression laws and second generation suppression is happening in areas of higher black population and lower income that were previously covered by preclearance.
Another connection to the VRA is how gerrymandering comes under section 2 of the VRA. I was listening to the discussion of the case of Alexander v. NAACP, SC and it was found that even though the voting map does dilute the voting power of minority voters, this was unintentional. It would have to be proven race was the predominant factor to be a violation of section 2 of the VRA. This has allowed for politicians to use partisanship to mask the racial effect of their gerrymandering if they wish to.
I found the main points to be very convincing as they are very relevant to our modern day lives. For example, the court case of Louisiana v. Callais has been re-argued in October 2025, and as of right now hasn't even been decided yet. Louisiana v. Callais is a court case about racial gerrymandering that the Supreme Court can now decide which could potentially impact the scope of the Voting Rights Act. I think that these topics do need to be talked about more with people being educated on them. I think many court cases in the past such as Shaw v. Reno and Miller v. Johnson have applications today. In fact, I feel the discussion around Louisiana v. Callais is revisiting the discussion of Miller v. Johnson about balancing minority representation without gerrymandering based on race alone. Also, I do agree with the fact that strict voter ID laws erroneously remove people, but I learned that it happens a lot to people of color.
I think that another convincing thing was when he talked about his perceptions of president Trump's intentions with the constitution everything was very logical and followed from things Trump has said in the past instead of resorting to ad hominem attacks. For example, talking about Trump's grapple with the 14th amendment has context which supports that he wants to get rid of birthright citizenship. Then using the supreme court case of Trump v. CASA I was able to see how the presenter was able to connect nationwide injunctions to Trump's executive order attempting to restrict the 14th amendment.
I think the protection of voting rights is very important and I have been exposed to the reality that some voters are facing a second disenfranchisement with the aftermath of Shelby County vs. Holder. The thought was that pre-clearance was an impediment and now that the VRA worked so well it wouldn't be necessary. However, I think that if they removed it then there's nothing stopping states and counties from changing their voting laws. I think that it is very important that people learn to put the correct people in power, so we don't have people who don't think their decisions far ahead or think about their decisions for their own party's good at the expense of a group of marginalized people.
Finally, I do disagree with the notion that people who look the same vote the same, so thus grouping a race together can be masked as a partisan bias instead of a racial bias. I find some of the cases faulty that as long as race wasn't the main factor the district can be held, because a group of people who look the same won't always have the same opinions. I understand that they do have some common issues that will usually unite them. I believe that grouping by race does have some overlap, but there is a line between racial & partisan gerrymandering and assuming that the same race votes the same is sometimes used to purport false statements.