Overturning a lower court decision, the U.S. Supreme Court last week allowed Louisiana's fall election preparations to go forward using a congressional redistricting map passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jeff Landry in January.
In a May 15 unsigned opinion, the high court granted an application for a stay of the Western District of Louisiana’s ruling blocking the Louisiana secretary of state from using the new congressional map in the upcoming presidential vote.
“The April 30, 2024, order of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana … is stayed pending the timely docketing of the appeal in this court,” the Supreme Court stated. “Should the jurisdictional statement be timely filed, this order shall remain in effect pending this Court’s action on the appeal.”
The effect of the decision is to push back the consideration of litigation over the latest map until next year, well after the fall election. The high court’s 6-3 decision was applauded both by advocates of voting rights for Black Louisiana voters as well as Republican state officials, including Attorney General Liz Murrill.
"The secretary of state has consistently stated she needed a map by May 15,” Murrill said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter. “The plaintiffs did not contest it at trial. We will continue to defend the law and are grateful the Supreme Court granted the stay which will ensure we have a stable election season.”
Jared Evans, senior policy counsel with the Legal Defense Fund, said the creation of a more fair congressional map in Louisiana was a long time in coming.
“After three years of intense advocacy, two years of protracted litigation, four redistricting sessions of the Legislature, two trips to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and two appeals to the Supreme Court, Louisiana will finally have a congressional map with two majority-Black districts for this fall's elections,” Evans told the Louisiana Record in an emailed statement.
Central to the Legal Defense Fund’s advocacy in the congressional redistricting battle was how the state’s previously drawn map provided only one majority-Black district, according to Evans, who added that Black residents comprised about one-third of the state electorate. Louisiana has six congressional districts.
“While this order from the (Supreme) Court only pertains to this fall's elections, and the litigation will pick back up later this year for what the configuration of the congressional map will look like in 2026 and beyond, this is a major win for us, our clients, our allies and partners in the Legislature, and the Black citizens of Louisiana,” he said.
The congressional map was temporarily placed on hold on April 30, when a three-judge panel in the Western District decided the state could not enforce the map in this year’s elections because it amounted to “an impermissible racial gerrymander” in violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause. That ruling was handed down in a lawsuit filed in January by multiple non-Black plaintiffs.
In making its decision, the Supreme Court cited what’s called the Purcell principle, which generally precludes rule changes before elections due to potential voter confusion and the resulting technical challenges the changes can pose for election officials.
But three justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented, with Jackson concluding that the Purcell case should not play a role because there was little risk of voter confusion. Jackson seemed comfortable with the Western District’s deadline for a new map to be imposed by the parties by June 4.
“Rather than wading in now, I would have let the District Court’s remedial process run its course before considering whether our emergency intervention was warranted,” she said in her dissent.