Plaintiffs seeking to redraw Louisiana’s congressional map to ensure Black residents have equal voting power are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate an October court hearing on drawing up a new redistricting plan.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week blocked a lower court decision that required the hearing to begin on Oct. 3. The lower court’s action failed to give the Louisiana Legislature an adequate opportunity to revise the congressional map before the district court stepped in to get the process under way, according to the appeals court ruling.
“The court provided merely five weeks for the state’s preparation,” the appeals court decision says. “No mention was made about the state Legislature’s entitlement to attempt to conform the districts to the court’s preliminary injunction determinations.”
The plaintiffs in the litigation, including the Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP, argue that the current map violates a section of the federal Voting Rights Act and that the state needs to have a second majority-Black congressional district to be in compliance with that act.
On Saturday, the plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Fifth Circuit’s action could compromise the timeline to enact a new congressional map.
“The right of all Americans to equal voting power is a central pillar of our democracy and for too long Black Louisianans have been excluded from the democratic process,” Sarah Brannon, managing attorney of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said in a prepared statement. “We won’t allow procedural delays or other tactics to hamper the fight for an equitable and lawful map for all Louisianans.”
A spokesman for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund told the Louisiana Record that there is still adequate time to come up with a new map prior to next year’s midterm elections.
“We fully expect to have a map with two majority-Black districts in place by the 2024 election,” Jared Evans, the LDF’s senior policy counsel, said in an email.
The litigation, Robinson v. Ardoin, which accused state officials of putting in place a racially gerrymandered congressional map, was originally filed in March of last year. The U.S. Supreme Court put the lawsuit on hold, however, until it decided a similar case involving redistricting in Alabama, Alabama v. Milligan. The latter case was decided in June, with the court concluding that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that Alabama’s congressional map also violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
In the Fifth Circuit decision, a three-judge panel voted 2-1 to cancel this week’s hearings that had been scheduled by Judge Shelly Dick of the Western District of Louisiana. Judge Stephen Higginson dissented from his colleagues’ views.
“There is no support for the assertion that the hearing, lasting for three days at the beginning of October, is mutually exclusive with progression to a full-merits trial,” Higginson wrote. “The state can also, of course, appeal any remedial plan that the hearing produces.”
He also noted that the Fifth Circuit has previously assured district judges that they have “broad discretion and inherent authority” in docket-scheduling decisions.
“The district court exercised that discretion when the Supreme Court lifted its stay after a year,” Higginson said.