Supreme Court orders Louisiana to use congressional map with two majority-Black districts

A proposal from Sen. Glen Womack, to create a majority Black district that stretches from Caddo Parish to East Baton Rouge Parish (Screen capture from bill)

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered Louisiana to use maps with two majority-Black districts approved earlier this year for this fall’s congressional elections.

The order issued Wednesday suspends a lower court’s ruling that found that the map, signed into law after a five-day special legislative session convened at Gov. Jeff Landry’s direction, constitutes an illegal racial gerrymander in violation of the 14th and 15th amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court’s order does not deal with the lower court’s findings, but rather allows the most recent map to stay in place at least through this year’s election. A similar situation happened in 2022 when the state was allowed to use congressional maps with a single majority-Black district approved in a special session that year even though a lower court ruled they violated the Voting Rights Act. That decision was allowed to stand, leading to the creation of new maps this year.

The population of Louisiana is roughly one-third Black, yet only one of its six congressional districts provided a Black candidate strong odds of winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives before state lawmakers revised the boundaries in January.

The Supreme Court’s order comes as a victory to a set of strange bedfellows: Landry, aided by fellow conservative Attorney General Liz Murrill, and Black voters, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who also fought Murrill and Landry in court over the 2022 redistricting plans.

“After two years of intense and protracted litigation, Louisiana finally has a map with two majority black districts,” Jared Evans, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement to the Illuminator . “We are so relieved to finally be able to have resolution in this case and to be able to tell our clients, and the black voters of Louisiana, who comprise 1/3 of the state’s population, that they will be able to elect their preferred candidate in two out of Louisiana, six congressional districts.”

“The Secretary of State has consistently stated she needed a map by May 15. The plaintiffs did not contest it at trial,” Murrill said Wednesday in a statement. “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.”

A group of non-Black voters challenged the congressional map lawmakers created in January through a lawsuit, Callais v. Landry , filed in Louisiana’s Western District federal court. Judges  found new lines for the 6th Congressional District were illegal because they ruled the lines had been drawn based on race — rejecting the state’s argument that the drawing of the lines was driven by politics. Partisan gerrymandering remains legal in the United States, but racial gerrymandering is not.

Their decision, and a subsequent request that the Legislature adopt a new map before June 3 , required the Supreme Court to weigh in ahead of November’s congressional primaries.

The special redistricting session in January was in response to an order from U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, an appointee of President Barack Obama, in the case Robinson v. Landry . She gave the Legislature until Jan. 31 to redraw the congressional districts, after ruling the 2022 map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits voting laws or procedures that purposefully discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group. Diluting the voting power of racial minorities is one way the law can be violated.

Supreme Court Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson penned a dissent in the order issued Wednesday, disputing the state’s argument that it needed a map in place by May 15.

“There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out from the November election. In fact, we have often denied stays of redistricting orders issued as close or closer to an election,” Jackson wrote. “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.”

The six conservative justices on the court prevailed. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined Jackson in denying the plaintiffs’ request to keep the map from taking effect.

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