Lisette’s Take: “In the highly politicized, partisan effort to erode voting rights across red and blue states, I count on her. We're at a junction moment, and she’s working right in the center of it.” To hear all episodes and learn more about Lisette Nieves, visit Lisette-Nieves.com
Janai Nelson is President and Director-Counsel of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization. Throughout her legal career, she has played a pivotal role in numerous landmark legal cases. Most recently, she argued Louisiana v. Callais before the Supreme Court. The voting rights case aims to secure equitable Congressional representation for Black voters in Louisiana, and defend the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Before joining LDF, she was also a full professor at St. John’s University School of Law.
Lisette Nieves: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Junction Podcast. I'm so excited. The person you get to know today is Janai Nelson. She's the president and direct counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, the nation's premier civil rights law organization. Throughout her legal career, she's played a pivotal role in numerous landmark legal cases, of which we'll discuss a few. Most recently, she argued Louisiana versus Callais before the Supreme Court. The voting rights case aims to secure equitable congressional representation for Black voters in Louisiana and defend the Constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Before joining LDF, she was a full professor of law at St. John's University. She is Brooklyn born and bred, huh? Can we say that?
Janai Nelson: Queens-born.
Nieves: Okay.
Nelson: Queens bred, but Brooklyn based.
Nieves: Brooklyn-based. Brooklyn-based. And Brooklyn-claimed. Can we claim you?
Nelson: Yes, please claim me, Brooklyn. I love Brooklyn.
Nieves: Okay, great. Great. I'm excited to have Janai on this podcast because we actually met of all places, in Kenya on a trip through a mutual friend. So, that was a beautiful moment to connect to. And I'm going to just start with an icebreaker question. What's a guilty pleasure you're indulging in right now? Just a guilty pleasure.
Nelson: I've got two that come immediately to mind. One is that I've become addicted to Trader Joe's dark chocolate peanut butter cups.
Nieves: I love them so much.
Nelson: Don't you? I mean, they're just the best after-meal treat. Also, I've been watching The Morning Show.
Nieves: Wow. Okay. I haven't seen that yet.
Nelson: Yeah. I don't watch a ton of TV, but every once in a while I'll start a series and I saw it on the plane and I've been continuing it since. So those are my two current guilty pleasures.
Nieves: Oh, I love that. I love that. Oh, those peanut butter cups. And I'll check out The Morning Show. I love that.
Nelson: Yeah, it's interesting.
Nieves: All Right. Well, why don't we get started. And before we get into some of the cases, Janai, just walk me through a little bit of young Janai growing up and how you came to be the lawyer, the advocate, the leader, the visionary for justice that you are.
Nelson: Well, as you mentioned, I was born and raised in Queens, Astoria, Queens to be precise, Astoria Houses, which is a public housing project that still exists. It's one of the largest in the country. And that was a very formative experience for me. I lived there until I was 16 and then moved to some other places in Queens. So, I'm very much a Queens girl. There's no question about it. Very much someone who carries that experience of living in public housing, of living in a community that was very much at the margins. And that's part of my identity, part of what spurred me to do the work that I do today. And it's been really wonderful. It's been a true honor and privilege to be able to look at some of the injustices that I experienced as a child and to be able to work to remedy them now.
Nieves: All right. Now, other than Trader Joe's delicious dark chocolate peanut butter cups getting you through this time in this country, we're going to go right into it.
How do you manage what's happening right now? How do you take care of yourself?
Nelson: Well, I am coming off the heels of a magnificent weekend spent in Selma, Alabama. This past weekend was the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday, which is a mass protest that occurred in Alabama that ultimately led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. But as part of that trajectory, people lost their lives, people were beaten, people were bloodied, people were assaulted. They were terrorized by government officials, by people who were sworn to uphold the law and to protect them. Instead, they were attacked.
But out of that courage and out of that perseverance and that fearlessness, we got the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which means that we ultimately got a piece of paper that has served as the birth certificate of our multiracial democracy. It's something that I think we have taken for granted in many ways for the past 60 years, and we forget what it took to get those rights. So, every year, our organization at the Legal Defense Fund, we go back to visit and to celebrate and to do a bridge crossing with many other organizations and many leaders and many other people who make this a pilgrimage.
We've been doing this for decades before it became a popular thing to do. And we do that because it gives you the inspiration to go on. It reminds you that you're part of a continuum of people in history who are fighting for change. So, that's how I manage this moment. I know it's not about me. I know it's not about a single person in the White House. I know it's not about a single set of current assaults. This is part of a long journey where people who have been cast to the margins have somehow been brilliant enough, been smart and strategic enough to force this country to change against its will.
And so, this is our turn to do it, and that is really what keeps me energized.
Nieves: Yeah. I love that. Did you spend some time in Montgomery as well?
Nelson: I did. I did. I didn't have a chance to visit the EJI Museum, the museum there that pays homage to the many individuals, the well over 1,000 individuals who were lynched in this country.
Nieves: Absolutely.
Nelson: And we're actually going through a resurgence of that sort of violence, some unexplained killings and deaths across the South right now. I think there's a total of about 70 that we're concerned about and looking into. I got to be very close to that site and to see that. And it's a stark reminder of how atrocious human beings can be towards one another. And when we put those types of incidents out of sight and out of mind, we are apt to do them again because we're too naive to think that it could happen. That's why it's important that we remind ourselves that it is possible and that we have to constantly fight against those base instincts and choices that humans sometimes make in order to maintain power.
Nieves: Yeah. And Janai, though, we won't go into them, where can people learn more about this? Because it's not covered in the mainstream media, particularly thinking about the assaults on African Americans in the South and what's happening. Where else can our listeners learn more?
Nelson: So, there are many places. I'm really proud of the archives that the Legal Defense Fund has. We, as the lawyers of the civil rights movement, we have ephemera, we have documents, we have all manner of information that talks about what was happening at the time. At the time that we were founded in 1940, going forward.
Nieves: Historically to present day. And to present day.
Nelson: That's right. So, you can go to naacpldf.org. And what I love the most about our archives is that we now have many oral history interviews of people who are still living, still breathing, and are part of that history and have suffered and experienced some of the most challenging incidents that you can imagine to help reshape this country. So, you get to hear it in their voices, in their own words, from their perspective, and it's a history that we just cannot afford to forget. So, that's a very exciting and accessible place to find out more information.
Nieves: Absolutely. And then the Equal Justice Initiative as well as a one for historical
Nelson: Eji.org. Yep.
Nieves: Yep. And I think, but most importantly, the part about seeing what's happening present day, which I think is a piece that is not covered in the mainstream media and the way that it should be. I want to take us to a Senate testimony you had in 2024, because I feel as if you could make that same testimony today. Can I just read a few lines of that?
Nelson: Sure.
Nieves: So, it says, during your 2024 Senate testimony, you remarked that Black Americans are heading into November, and I'm thinking of this November, with a shredded shield, referring to the weakening of the Voting Rights Act. Thinking about that right now, and what's the legislation that's being pushed right now? Can you talk to us about what's happening?
Nelson: Sure. So, there are a few things that are happening. One is that the Voting Rights Act itself is under attack. It has been whittled down over the course of the past almost 15 years. It's been just slowly, slowly eaten away. And it was challenged from the day it was passed. So, this is not entirely new. Even though this country, as I said, was not a real democracy before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, there are people who opposed the inclusion of every eligible citizen from day one. And so, it took this big piece of legislation to make that happen. And over time, some of the opponents to civil rights have succeeded in making that piece of legislation weaker. So, that happened in 2013 in a case called Shelby County versus Holder.
Nieves: Yes.
Nelson: It happened again in the 2020s with a case called Brnovich versus the DNC where the Voting Rights Act was limited in what it could do to combat voter suppression laws. And then as we speak, we're awaiting a decision that I hope will uphold what is left of the Voting Rights Act. It should if the Supreme Court is consistent with its own precedent, but it's a case that LDF has been extremely involved in, it's called Louisiana versus Callais. I had the privilege of arguing that case in October.
Nieves: You did.
Nelson: And that case is just another example of the threats that are cast against the Voting Rights Act. And that case involves protecting Black communities in particular from racial gerrymandering.
But that's not the only area. Right now, we're seeing legislation that aims to make people show their papers in order to register to vote, to show their passport, show their birth certificate, when we have many other ways of verifying that voters are who they say they are in ways that have worked for us for many decades and that are safe and secure. We're seeing the manipulation of the rules of the post office and when certain ballots are postmarked, in order to keep people's votes from being counted.
So, there are many assaults right now on the right to vote that people don't hear enough about, and they are disguised with tricky language like the SAVE Act, which does not save our elections. It aims to sabotage our elections. Or the Make Elections Great Again Act, the MEGA Act, which does not make elections great at all, certainly not again.
And so, we have to know not to be distracted from the propaganda and to recognize these attempts to limit our democracy for what they are.
Nieves: Yeah. And I think this is where it really helps to have the historical perspective in thinking about how long the Legal Defense Fund has been around. But we have to remember that post-Civil War, there was an absolute backlash, absolute backlash.
Nelson: 100%.
Nieves: Right. And we've seen this pendulum, right? So, this idea of opening up the doors to access an opportunity was immediately met with an incredible level of policing of silencing, that literally 1964 Act was supposed to ameliorate, but now we're seeing a swinging back, right?
Absolutely. And so, before I go on to some other questions, there is, you're right, in the MEGA Act, the MEGA Act, the SAVER, you could use whatever the acronyms you want to use. There are a few things on the table, right? One is showing paperwork. One is removing early voting, removing mail-in voting. Think about it. I still remember voting and waiting online. As progressive as New York might be and not, and I don't mean that in a political way, but let's say in the voting right, look how long it even took us to get early voting.
Nelson: That's right. That's right.
Nieves: Right? So, what's at stake here? And if these were rolled back, what are the actual impacts that happen on people?
Nelson: Yeah, they're quite dire because there are many policies right now that are hurting us deeply. We're experiencing severe economic oppression. Affordability is a real concern. Access to employment opportunities, educational opportunities. Mass incarceration is still plaguing our communities. Healthcare is a huge issue. And the only way that you can change those things is if you elect people who have your interests in mind, and if you elect a Congress and others who will hold bad actors accountable.
Right now, we have an administration that is feeding on chaos and corruption, and we can't continue to allow that to happen and think that we're going to be safe. ICE, snatching our neighbors and friends off of streets and putting them into inhumane detention facilities and disappearing people. Those are all issues that-
Nieves: Straight out of our history books.
Nelson: Straight out of our history books. Those are issues that yes, we can protest about, yes, we should be vocal about in every way, but we also have to use the power of our vote to change those conditions and circumstances. So, if we are now forced to prove that we are citizens by showing a passport or our birth certificates before one can register, we will be icing out a huge swath of new voters, like young people and other individuals who are eligible to vote, who don't have access to those documents. So, there are about-
Nieves: Right. Less than half the Americans have a passport, right? Just think about what this means, right?
Nelson: Yeah. To me, it's so clear that they're choosing the types of documents that most people have the least access to. 146 million people, which is about 42% of our population does not have access to a passport. And a birth certificate, I challenge anyone listening to tell me that they can grab their birth certificate within the next five minutes. You can't. Most folks may have lost it or it's tucked away somewhere and it's not accessible.
And so, we need to be making voting easier, not less secure, but easier. And we've verified voters in every single state of this country. There's no place where you just get to walk in and cast a ballot without some type of means of verifying who you are. The question is, are we going to make it harder to do that or are we going to make it reasonable? And that's all we're saying is that there should be reasonable requirements, not these punitive, excessive, extractive demands on voters that basically will turn eligible voters away and make the electorate shrink.
Nieves: I think some of the things that are so interesting, that this has been a very strong partisan effort, right? We can call it that, highly politicized, partisan effort, that mail-in voting and the most basic form of voting certification, which is address, ID, those kinds of basic things, are the ones that are used heavily in these communities that could also be impacted. This is going to have an impact across red and blue states, right?
Nelson: It's going to harm everyone, but it will have a disproportionate harm on Black and brown communities.
Nieves: Oh, absolutely no question.
Nelson: And that is the intention. And so, there's always been some collateral damage to racial discrimination. When they try to starve us economically, poor white people hurt too, but not in the same way and not to the same degree. And that's why there isn't often the universal outrage that there should be. And we see that in the form of response to what happened in Minnesota, for example, Black and brown people have been, and indigenous people have been subjected to lawless law enforcement for decades, but-
Nieves: For decades.
Nelson: Sometimes it takes approximate injury, right? People close to you, people with whom you identify like a Nicole Good or an Alex Pretti to make you see it a little more clearly.
Nieves: Absolutely. And so, you've described the Legal Defense Fund as the private DOJ, Department of Justice.
Nelson: Yes. Actually, my predecessor, Sherrilyn Ifill, came up with that description, but yes, that is quite right. We have to be a Department of Justice because that department has been so utterly compromised and we can't rely on the federal government to do that.
Nieves: No, there's absolutely... So, no, I count on you, but we look at this podcast or I look at this podcast as one of what are junction points and moments, right? And we're at one of those moments, I would say, right? Where we are, and you're working right in the center of that. What's next for you? How do you see us moving through this?
Nelson: Well, what's next for me, most immediately, our focus is on the midterms, is making sure that people have access to the ballot in 2026, and then again in 2028. But I think 2026 is crucial and will help determine whether there is a 2028 election. We know that there are forces that want to entrench this administration's power permanently. So, every single person has to get involved and do something to have their voices heard in this upcoming election. So, that is my primary near-term focus. My longer-term focus is focusing on the next 250 years. We are in a year where many people are commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and seeing this as a celebration of 250 years of our country, I'm focused on what the next 250 years look like because the past 250 years have not been that great for Black people and other communities that were not really envisioned in the ideal of America, and yet we have made America. We have built it.
Nieves: Absolutely. We built the economy. We built America.
Nelson: We literally built it brick by brick.
Nieves: Yes.
Nelson: Policy by policy. So many of the freedoms and things that distinguish this country as a leader in democracy have been, not because of what the founding fathers, so to speak, created, but because of how marginalized people helped imbue those ideals with real practical application, real laws that protect your rights, real laws that advance freedoms.
And we have as much at stake in this country as anyone else, if not more. And thinking about how we create a multiracial democracy where power is shared, dignity is sacred and thriving is the standard for everyone is the mission that LDF is on, and one that we expect to succeed in.
Nieves: So, I'm going to close us out with something you've said as well too. When we talk about this idea about culture wars, it's a fundamental battle over memory and narrative power, right?
Nelson: Yes, it is. It really is. We have to remember who we are and be honest with who we are. And I think we actually sell ourselves short as a country and as individuals when we only tell part of the story, when we only tell the highlights, because we don't get to claim the real power of the triumphs if you don't talk about the trials, right? If you don't talk about what you were overcoming and what forces were against you, that makes the triumph that much more consequential and that much more impressive. So, the fact that this country has evolved from one that was founded on genocide of indigenous persons, and that was built only because of the labor of enslaved Africans, if we can acknowledge those facts and the continued racism that has occurred since then, and yet shown the way that there has still been success, there has been growth, there has been inclusion, there has been progress, that is a phenomenal story. I mean, that's like stuff that people make movies about.
Nieves: That's the miracle of the American experiment. There's no question.
Nelson: That's exactly right. It is truly a miracle, right? And we need to claim it all because it wasn't just happenstance. There was real intentionality and sacrifice and a true love for the vision of this country that I think people don't fully appreciate. So, that's up to us.
Nieves: Yeah.
Nelson: That's what our job is.
Nieves: And what's inspiring is seeing that recent Philadelphia case that has said, excuse me, memory is critical, critical to understanding the context. And that actually really inspired me. So, as we close out, Janai, what are you going to do to continue to take care of yourself during this moment so that you can tell us and give us some advice too on how to take care of ourselves?
Nelson: Well, I'm going to stay in good conversations like this one with good people like you, Lisette, which really is important. It's good to be around people who are thinking in a similar way, asking challenging questions. We should all be actively engaged in this moment. I will surround myself with good friends and family.
And also, as you said, we met where we spent the most time together in Kenya. And so, traveling and getting a world perspective is also really helpful. We're not the only country going through some type of turmoil, some type of tug of war for the future, for the state of our people. And so, it's good to kind of step outside yourself sometimes. And I'm looking forward to doing that as well.
Nieves: Well, what a beautiful note to end on. Janai, thank you. Thank you for being one of our treasures. Thank you for making sure that you are leading the private DOJ because we need that, and-
Nelson: Thank you.
Nieves: ... we stand behind you. Thanks so much.
Nelson: I appreciate it. Thank you.
Credits: Thank you for listening!
At The Junction, we reflect on the moments that make us — with today’s most impactful leaders. The show was created and hosted by me, Lisette Nieves, and produced by LWC Studios.
This show is available everywhere you listen to podcasts, and on YouTube. I encourage you to share video and audio episodes by linking to them on social media, websites, and by sharing them in your online affinity groups. Our executive editor is Juleyka Lantigua. Michelle Baker is our senior producer. Alyson Rich and Cesar Ventura provided administrative support. CDM Studios is our live recording location. Our theme song is “La Juntura Cultural,” arranged by Randy Seriguchi, Jr. and D'Artanian Woodard, produced by Randy Seriguchi, Jr., and recorded by Farmacy Studio.
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