The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up a long-running legal dispute over congressional redistricting in Louisiana in the wake of a lawsuit filed by “non-African Americans” that challenges the legality of the state’s second majority-Black congressional district.
The high court made the decision Nov. 4 in a list of orders for its next session. The court said it would allot one hour for oral arguments in the cases of Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais, which will be consolidated.
Arguments before the justices in the cases, which revolve around interpretations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, are expected to take place next year. The plaintiffs challenging the newest map argue that the state Legislature’s decision to adopt a congressional map with two majority-minority districts violated Section 2 because the map amounted to an “impermissible racial gerrymander.”
A federal district court agreed with the plaintiffs, but on May 15 the Supreme Court stayed the lower court’s ruling and allowed the Legislature’s 2024 map to be used in the Nov. 5 election. A previous congressional redistricting map adopted by the state Legislature in 2022 was successfully challenged by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and several plaintiffs who argued that because Blacks made up about one-third of the state’s population, they should have majorities in two of the state’s six congressional districts.
The state has argued that the latest map was drawn up using political rather than racial objectives in that it served to protect three Republican incumbents, including the current speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.
““We look forward to arguing this case in the Supreme Court next year,” state Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement emailed to the Louisiana Record. “State legislatures have the responsibility under the federal Constitution to draw these maps. We have said all along, in defending the old map and the new one, that the Supreme Court needs to provide more clear guidance to legislators and reduce judicial second-guessing after the Legislature does its job.”
Murrill also stressed state officials’ belief that the current map is constitutional, given the Supreme Court’s most recent statements.
State officials have also complained that they have been between a rock and a hard place, having been accused of a racial gerrymander when they created a map with two Black-majority districts and also sued for violations of the Voting Rights Act when they previously adopted a map with only one such district.
The non-Black plaintiffs have argued that the state Legislature’s political goals only came into play after Gov. Jeff Landry and lawmakers decided to create two Black-majority districts earlier this year.
But voting-rights groups that supported the state Legislature’s 2024 congressional map and opposed the previous map with a single majority-minority district are now aligned with Louisiana state officials about the need to keep the current map on the books.
“We remain undeterred in our fight for fair elections for Black voters in Louisiana,” Nora Ahmed, legal director, ACLU of Louisiana, said in a prepared statement. “The law is clear. The current map is fair and constitutional. We have every reason to believe the Supreme Court will keep it in place.”
The new redistricting map did change the makeup of Louisiana’s congressional delegation this week. Voters on Tuesday elected two Black congressmen, Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, allowing Democrats to pick up an additional seat in Congress.