The U.S. Justice Department has intervened in a federal lawsuit that challenges the legality of Louisiana’s state legislative boundaries, prompted by the Secretary of State's challenge to the constitutionality of a section of the federal Voting Rights Act.
Justice Department attorneys filed their brief on Dec. 19 in the Middle District of Louisiana. The brief argues against a motion filed by attorneys for Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin to stop the lawsuit’s proceedings based on constitutional questions raised by the plaintiffs’ interpretation of Section 2 of the VRA.
The challenge to Louisiana’s House of Representatives and state Senate districts was filed by Louisiana voters and several voting and civil rights groups in March 2022. The lawsuit argues that the number of Black voters in the state warrants the creation of six to nine more Black-majority House districts and three additional state Senate districts.
The state’s Legislature now consists of 39 Senate districts and 105 House districts.
The Justice Department’s intervention in the redistricting case has the backing of one of the groups supporting the litigation.
“The Justice Department is intervening to defend the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act,” Stuart Naifeh, redistricting projects manager of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told the Louisiana Record in an email. “Defendants have made a fundamentally frivolous argument that Section 2 is not justified by current conditions even though the relevant legal standard and the evidence we presented are directly tied to current conditions. We welcome the Justice Department’s participation in the case on this narrow issue.”
The defendant’s attorneys, however, argue that increasing the number of majority-minority legislative districts would mean the court would have to “interpret the Voting Rights Act in a way that violates the U.S. Constitution.”
“It is highly likely that the Supreme Court of the United States will soon be asked to rule definitively on whether Congress granted private plaintiffs the ability to sue under Section 2 of the VRA,” a brief filed by the defendant states. “And as indicated by Justice (Neil) Gorsuch, cases from the Supreme Court ‘have assumed – without deciding – that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 furnishes an implied cause of action under (Section) 2.’”
But in its brief, the U.S. Justice Department said Section 2, which puts in place a permanent ban on racial bias in state-imposed voting practices, has repeatedly been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court as an appropriate exercise of congressional power under the 14th and 15th Amendments.
The department said it takes no position in the merits or factual basis of the Louisiana plaintiffs’ case.
The plaintiffs want a court declaration that Louisiana’s state legislative maps violate the VRA and a permanent injunction blocking the secretary of state from using the current map in future elections.
How the federal district court in the Middle District of Louisiana will rule on the Section 2 constitutional question, however, is uncertain. The Fifth District Court of Appeals recently rejected a similar VRA challenge in a case involving a challenge to Louisiana’s congressional map.
The district court held a trial on the merits of the legislative-maps case starting on Nov. 27 and lasting until Dec. 5. Chief Judge Shelly Dick has yet to make a ruling in the lawsuit.