WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will review a redistricting case concerning Louisiana’s congressional map, which features two districts with predominantly Black populations.
While arguments will not be heard until early next year, the 2024 elections will proceed using the contested map. This could potentially benefit Democrats in their pursuit of reclaiming control of the closely divided House of Representatives.
A federal court had previously invalidated the map. However, the Supreme Court allowed its use in the 2024 elections following an emergency appeal from the state and civil rights groups.
The central question before the justices is whether the state relied excessively on race in creating a second majority-Black district.
The Supreme Court’s recent order marks the latest development in a series of federal court disputes over Louisiana’s congressional districts, spanning over two years. Two congressional maps drawn by the state have been blocked by lower courts, leading to two interventions by the Supreme Court.
In 2022, the state’s Republican-led legislature adjusted the congressional map to reflect population changes from the 2020 Census. These modifications essentially maintained the existing balance of five Republican-leaning majority-white districts and one Democratic-leaning majority-Black district in a state where approximately one-third of the population is Black.
Drawing attention to the state’s sizable Black population, civil rights advocates challenged the map in a Baton Rouge-based federal court. They prevailed in a ruling by U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, who found that the districts likely discriminated against Black voters.
The Supreme Court temporarily halted Dick’s ruling while considering a similar case from Alabama. Despite rulings from federal judges finding both states’ maps likely discriminatory, the justices allowed both states to use their maps in the 2022 elections.
Eventually, the high court upheld the Alabama ruling, prompting a new map and a second district with the potential to elect a Black lawmaker. The Louisiana case was then returned to federal court with the expectation that new maps would be in place for the 2024 elections.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set an early 2024 deadline for Louisiana lawmakers to create a new map or risk a court-imposed map.
Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, had defended Louisiana’s congressional map as the state’s attorney general. However, he urged lawmakers to pass a new map with another majority-Black district during a special session in January. He endorsed a map that established a new majority-Black district stretching across the state, connecting parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge areas.
A different set of plaintiffs, a group of self-identified non-African Americans, filed a lawsuit in western Louisiana. They argued that the new map was also unlawful because it was excessively driven by race, violating the Constitution. A divided panel of federal judges ruled 2-1 in their favor in April and blocked the use of the new map.
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to temporarily halt that ruling and allow the map to be used.
State Attorney General Liz Murrill, whose office has defended both maps enacted by lawmakers, urged the court to “provide more clear guidance to legislators and reduce judicial second-guessing after the Legislature does its job. Based upon the Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncements, we believe the map is constitutional.”
The state and civil rights groups, who were opposed to the first map, are now aligned in their support.
“Federal law requires Louisiana to have a fair map that reflects the power and voice of the state’s Black communities,” Stuart Naifeh of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund said in a statement. “The state recognized as much when it adopted a new map with a second majority-Black district in January. Now the Supreme Court must do the same.”
The Supreme Court’s vote to use the contested map in this year’s elections was unusual in that the dissenting votes came from the three liberal justices, who have generally supported Black voters in redistricting cases. However, in an opinion by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, they explained that their votes were motivated by their belief that there was sufficient time for a new map to be drawn and their disagreement with previous court orders that cited the proximity of an election as a reason to block lower-court rulings.
“There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out from the November election,” Jackson wrote in May.
In adopting the districts currently in use, Landry and his allies stated that politics, not race, was the driving factor. The congressional map creates politically safe districts for House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, both Republicans. Some lawmakers have also pointed out that the only Republican whose district was significantly altered in the new map, Congressman Mike Johnson, supported a GOP opponent of Landry in last fall’s gubernatorial race. Graves chose not to seek reelection under the new map.
Among the candidates in the newly formed district is Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields, a former congressman who is Black.
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Associated Press writer Sara Cline contributed to this report from Baton Rouge.