A 30-year-old federal consent decree that required Louisiana to protect the right of Black residents to select their preferred member of the state Supreme Court has been dissolved as a result of an appeals court ruling last month.
A majority of Fifth District Court of Appeals justices on Aug. 29 agreed with the appellant, the state Attorney General’s Office, that that state had completed the remedial actions contained in the consent decree. In 1992, the state agreed to conditions outlined in the so-called Chisom decree to ensure the voting rights of Black Louisianans were not disenfranchised.
A district court and a Fifth District panel previously opted not to dissolve the decree, concluding that the state had failed to meet the standard of proof needed to end the judicial contract. But the full appeals court disagreed, finding that the state had satisfied “substantial compliance” to the decree’s terms.under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
“In its order denying the state’s motion to dissolve, the district court erred by ignoring basic contract principles and instead imposing a new burden of proof on the state,” the Aug. 29 opinion states.
In 2021, then-Attorney General Jeff Landry filed a motion in federal court to dissolve the consent decree, arguing that the state met the conditions it agreed to and that the redistricting of state Supreme Court electoral districts was needed due to population changes.
This year, Landry, now the governor, signed a state Supreme Court districting plan into law that creates two majority-Black districts to ensure the rights of Black voters are not compromised. The redistricting plan led the parties in the ongoing litigation to agree that the Chisolm consent decree should be ended, though their reasonings differed.
The office of the current attorney general, Liz Murrill, expressed satisfaction with the Fifth District’s latest decision.
“The Fifth Circuit confirmed what we have argued all along, that the decree was no longer in effect, because we completed the terms of the agreement 30 years ago,” Lester Duhé, Murrill’s press secretary, said in an email to the Louisiana Record.
The plaintiffs’ counsel, consisting of the Legal Defense Fund, the international law firm Cozen O’Connor and Louisiana civil rights lawyers William Quigley and Ronald Wilson, issued a statement noting that the decree had made the voices of Black voters heard during state Supreme Court elections.
“With this decision, the en banc majority went out of its way to relieve the state’s attorney general of its obligations under federal law without providing any evidence that the decree’s purpose and all the obligations to which the state agreed had been satisfied,” the statement says. “... The importance and significance of the consent decree during its operation can neither be overstated nor erased.”
As a result of the decree, Orleans Parish voters elected three Black justices to the state’s high court, according to Democracy Docket, a voting-rights news website.
Several dissenting justices contended the state didn’t provide adequate evidence of its position and refused to commit to protecting a majority-minority voting district in the future. But the majority opinion concluded that the plaintiffs are free to file a new lawsuit if the state violates federal voting-rights provisions at a future date.