WASHINGTON — Among the flurry of major U.S. Supreme Court decisions last week was a minor one that impacts whether Louisiana could send one or two Black representatives to Congress.
Justice Samuel Alito gave the state and intervening parties of Black voters until July 30 to submit arguments on why the high court should decide whether to back the Legislature’s map from January, which drew districts that could lead to two Black and four White representatives; draw a different map; or return to the 2022 map that elected five White Republicans and one Black Democrat.
What the Supreme Court would decide, should the justices agree in September or October to take up the Louisiana case, is whether the Legislature’s new map adheres to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those standards include requiring minority-majority districts to be “geographically compact,” “politically cohesive" and subject to majority bloc voting that usually defeats the minority group’s preferred candidate.
But the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution forbids state legislators from separating voters into different voting districts on the basis of race.
A dozen “non-African American voters” argue that the Legislature’s January map was racially gerrymandered and should be discarded. Lawmakers split parishes, linked north and south with different interests using tenuous lines that packed White voters into four congressional districts, and linked Black neighborhoods from Baton Rouge to Lafayette to Alexandria to Shreveport to create a second Black majority district.
In a related case from South Carolina, the six-member conservative majority on the high court indicated in May that judges should defer to state legislatures on whether the intent in redistricting was political, which is allowed, or racial, which is not.
Lower federal courts have noted that, historically, Louisiana limited Black participation in elections through various means and that the vote has been racially polarized with White majority districts never electing a Black candidate.
Roughly a third of Louisiana’s residents are Black but only one member of the state’s congressional delegation is Black.
Fearing federal courts would draw new maps, Louisiana legislators in January threw out a 2022 map and changed the boundaries that identified which voters would get to vote for which congresspersons. They transformed Republican Rep. Garret Graves’ Baton Rouge-based 6th Congressional District from one that was 64% White into one with a constituency of 57% Black residents.
The Supreme Court in May ordered Louisiana to use the Legislature’s January map to conduct the Nov. 5 congressional elections because the races were too near to sort out the conflicting arguments. Graves withdrew from contention June 14 but maintains that the Supreme Court will return the congressional districts to something akin to what he was elected under in 2022.
Like Graves, the dozen voters challenged the Legislature's new map that created two Black majority districts and packed White voters in the remaining four congressional districts.
Of the dozen “non African American” voters, only one is from Baton Rouge. Four are former 6th District voters moved into new districts by the Legislature’s most recent redistricting. Three were in other districts and are now in the newly configured 6th District. Four weren’t part of the 6th District and were not moved to a different district as a result of the new map.
Their strongest argument is that the Louisiana Legislature only belatedly accepted the opinion that one-third of six equals two — a frequent refrain by supporters of a second minority-majority district. Lawmakers overrode then Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ veto in March 2022 to create a map with only one Black majority district.
Then-Attorney General Jeff Landry defended the validity of the 2022 map by arguing before lower federal courts on April 29, 2022: “No sufficiently numerous and geographically compact second majority-minority district can be drawn in Louisiana.” He said then that Black communities lived so far apart that larger cities would have to be paired with smaller rural towns in order to create that second district and that would amount to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
In his first act as governor in January, however, Republican Landry convened the Legislature to redraw the congressional maps to include a second Black majority district.
Black intervenors presented evidence during a lower court review earlier this year that politics — the desire to put Graves, who had angered some prominent Republicans, in an untenable political position — played a major role. Witnesses also said that predominantly Black communities in the newly configured district had similar interests that were not being represented in Washington by White Republicans.