A federal court has rejected Louisiana’s newly redrawn congressional map, creating uncertainty about fast-approaching fall election deadlines and sending voting-rights advocates on a scramble to get the U.S. Supreme Court to sort out the matter.
A three-judge panel in the Western District of Louisiana decided on April 30 that state officials should not enforce the congressional map, concluding that the boundaries of the Sixth District represented “an impermissible racial gerrymander.”
“Having considered the testimony and evidence at trial, the arguments of counsel and the applicable law, we conclude that District 6 of (Senate Bill 8) violates the (U.S. Constitution’s) equal protection clause,” the court found. “Accordingly, the state is enjoined from using SB 8 in any future elections.”
SB 8 was the legislation adopted by the state Legislature in January. The measure was signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry in the wake of another federal district court’s ruling that called on state officials to reconfigure the congressional map to include two majority-Black districts. The change was needed to make the map conform to provisions of the Voting Rights Act and not diminish the voting power of Black residents, who make up about a third of the state’s electorate, according to a Middle District of Louisiana decision.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and several Black voters are now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to quickly review the most recent ruling, according to Democracy Docket, a digital news platform that reports on voting rights issues. They also asked the high court to pause the district court ruling and allow the most recent map to be used in the fall election, though the Western District court in Shreveport denied a motion to pause its decision enjoining the state from using the SB 8 map.
Louisiana is now the only state in the nation without a map in place for congressional races, according to Democracy Docket, which also indicated that state officials have said the deadline to have a congressional map in place is May 15.
“Right now my belief is that the elections in November will simply be run with the current map we have in place now,” Robert Collins, professor of urban studies and public policy at Dillard University, told the Louisiana Record. “... The original plaintiffs filed a motion asking the Supreme Court to freeze the verdict that came out from the panel in Shreveport and to go ahead and move forward with the Legislature’s two Black-majority districts that they passed."
Currently, the two federal district courts in Louisiana have advanced two competing legal philosophies about the latest congressional map, with the Western District focusing more on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the Middle District concluding that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act should take precedence, according to Collins.
Supporters of the current map have argued that its boundaries were driven largely by politics and not race. The redrawn Sixth District, one of the two majority-minority jurisdictions, encompasses an area currently held by Republican Rep. Garret Graves, who endorsed gubernatorial candidate Stephen Waguespack in last year’s election instead of the eventual victor, Landry.
Collins indicated that the Supreme Court has said states can take politics into consideration when redistricting. But he added that the time to resolve the issue before bumping up against fall election deadlines is short.
“We’re kind of running out of road here,” he said.
The plaintiffs in the latest redistricting case are 12 individuals who are described as “non-African American voters.” The two Black-majority districts in the latest map are elongated, stretching hundreds of miles across Louisiana.