Sophia Lynn Lakin

This is Today Explained.

Sophia Lynn Lakin, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project.

That's correct.

I was one of the attorneys sitting at counsel table in October.

The justices certainly had a lot of questions, and this particular outcome that we are seeing right now is one that came up during oral argument, in part because the Solicitor General of the United States did raise this, or the lawyer for the Solicitor General's office did raise this in their briefing and at argument as what they termed it as a

tweak or an update, a modification to the existing law and the existing framework that we've been using for decades that the Supreme Court affirmed just two years at the time prior in a case called Allen versus Milligan.

But it's really an evisceration of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, not so much as they've been calling it an update.

We don't think this is legal.

Surprise, surprise.

And certainly, not only do we not think that the governor has no authority to do this, obviously, we're worried greatly about the rights of voters who have already cast their ballots and the confusion and chaos and disruption this is already going to cause.

And so if there was already a lawsuit filed, there will be more

And we are in court challenging that.

We're hearing indications that other states are interested in plowing forward following Louisiana's lead here.

Obviously, Florida had already had the special session plan.

Mississippi has one that they're contemplating as well and has already been announced.

So unfortunately, we're living in a time when...

You've got politicians who are very, very willing to take whatever opportunity that they have to basically accrue power to themselves.

And that's unfortunately really, really disappointing, to say the least.

Look, gerrymandering, gerrymandering in whatever form and whoever it's done by is not a good thing for a country that likes to say it is a democracy.

We want voters to be able to have an ability to hold their political leaders accountable, right?