Supreme Court to review Louisiana congressional map post-election

The Supreme Court announced Monday it will take up the fight over Louisiana’s congressional map, which has erupted into a messy legal battle over how to fix a racially gerrymandered design.

The court’s decision will not impact this year’s elections, as the justices previously allowed the legislature’s new map that includes a second majority-Black district to move forward until they resolve the case.

Yet the outcome stands to dictate whether Louisiana’s map can survive in future years and carry broader repercussions for how remedial designs can be drawn once a court strikes down a map under the Voting Rights Act.

A decision is expected by next summer.

Louisiana’s redistricting fight began after the 2020 census, when the Republican-led legislature overrode the Democratic governor’s veto to approve a new congressional map.

Like its predecessor, the design included only one majority-Black district. Two groups comprising Black voters and civil rights organizations sued, citing the increase in the Black population.

A three-judge district court panel ruled in their favor by finding the map likely violated the Voting Rights Act for diluting the power of Black voters. The Supreme Court temporarily put the disputed design into effect for the 2022 midterms, but the justices ultimately tossed the appeal after deciding a similar case from Alabama.

At issue now is Louisiana’s new map, which the legislature passed in January to avoid a court taking over drawing the lines. It includes a second majority-Black district.

The new map came under a legal challenge, this time from a group who identified themselves as “non-African American voters.” They contended the legislature went too far in trying to comply with the Voting Rights Act to the point where the design amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

A district court panel agreed, leading to the current appeals at the Supreme Court defending the design filed by one group of the original plaintiffs — who are being represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU — and Louisiana’s attorney general.

“To put the situation bluntly, the State is stuck in an endless game of ping-pong—and the State is the ball, not a player. Without this Court’s intervention, the State will be sued again no matter what it does,” the state wrote in its petition.

The state and private plaintiffs contend the map was not predominantly motivated by race and instead a desire to protect certain incumbents.

The new majority-Black House seat was carved out from Rep. Garrett Graves’s (R-La.) district, and the resulting shift toward Democrats led him to announce his retirement. Meanwhile, the design maintained a solid-red tilt in the districts held by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.).

“The panel majority’s flagrant disregard of the Legislature’s political goals, its failure to even attempt to disentangle race and politics, and its assertion of racial predominance without requiring an appropriate alternative map all constitute legal errors warranting reversal,” the private plaintiffs wrote in their petition.