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This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais about the last remaining section of the Voting Rights Act, a civil-rights law designed to ensure that states could not get in the way of nonwhite citizens voting. The law was put in place to reverse Jim Crow–era policies that kept Black people out of southern politics. Over the decades, it expanded to protect Spanish speakers, Native Americans, disabled people, and minority voters all over the country.

The decision will likely hinge on Chief Justice John Roberts, who has been dubious about the Voting Rights Act for years. Based on the oral arguments, most court watchers concluded that the majority of justices were “skeptical” of the already weakened law. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson gave the act its most elaborate and convincing defense, which soon might be transcribed and remembered as its obituary.

Our two guests this week—Stacey Abrams, a voting-rights activist and former candidate for Georgia governor, and the Atlantic staff writer Vann Newkirk—both have families who grew up in the South before the Voting Rights Act. Newkirk recalls that his great-grandmother could not vote until she was a grandmother, so a world without the Voting Rights Act is one he can easily imagine. But as Newkirk also points out, Americans without those family stories might not realize what they are about to lose. Most starkly, defanging the Voting Rights Act could encourage states to redraw districts in a way that shuts out minority voters with impunity.

Estimates show that the ruling could hand the House to Republicans, as Democrats could lose six to 19 seats, which Abrams warns could ensure “one-party rule” going forward. Will we easily slip out of this era we’ve come to take for granted, in which American democracy is at least theoretically accessible to all?

The following is a transcript of the episode:

President Lyndon B. Johnson: This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their destinies.

Hanna Rosin: When Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, he called it “a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory won on any battlefield.”

For decades, the Voting Rights Act was reshaped and expanded, mostly by Congress. It became a kind of intricate machine that allowed the federal government to step in whenever minorities were not fairly represented in any state. Since the law passed, the number of nonwhite representatives in the House has gone up over tenfold. And the first Black president was elected.

It was effective, supported by both parties and thriving. Until it wasn’t.

I’m Hanna Rosin. This is Radio Atlantic. Wednesday the Supreme Court heard arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, about the state’s redistricting map. A group of self-labeled “non–African Americans” are challenging a new majority-minority district in Louisiana, claiming that it violates the Constitution.

The Court has already chipped away at parts of the act in recent years. This latest case involves Section 2, the last pillar of the Voting Rights Act.

The key question of the case is: Do the act’s measures to fix racial discrimination actually violate the equal protection and voting rights enshrined in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments? Does the crowning civil-rights law of the 1960s violate the crowning civil-rights laws of the 1860s?

Or, more concretely, as one of my guests put it:

Stacey Abrams: If you know that racial discrimination has existed in maps, can you use race to fix that?

Rosin: That’s Stacey Abrams, a voting-rights activist, lawyer, and two-time Democratic nominee for Georgia governor.

We don’t know how the Court will come down. But for Abrams, it’s easy to see what’s at stake:

Abrams: We will not have free and fair elections in this country going forward if they are permitted to strike down the Voting Rights Act, because what you are saying is that for the vast majority of people of color in this country, you will not be permitted to have access to a truly representative democracy.

Rosin: We will hear more from Abrams in the second half of the show. But first, staff writer Vann Newkirk, who has written about the Voting Rights Act, helps us think about the oral argument before the Supreme Court this week and what we can and can’t read from the justices.