Supreme Court steps aside in battle over Louisiana congressional maps

The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for a challenge to Louisiana’s congressional map to proceed, raising the likelihood that the state will soon have to create a second district that will allow black voters to select a representative.

Lifting a nearly year-long hold on the case, the judges said a New Orleans federal appeals court should review the case before the 2024 congressional elections. in the state. By preventing a map challenge from proceeding while it considered a similar case in Alabama, the Supreme Court had effectively allowed a Republican-signed map to take effect in Louisiana during the 2022 election cycle.

Although Louisiana’s population is about 30 percent black, the six-county map issued by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature has only one district with a majority of black voters.

Monday’s announcement came after the court issued a surprise ruling this month in the Alabama case, finding that lawmakers there had undermined the right to vote for black voters. It is now increasingly expected that challenges in Louisiana and other southern states will end with redrawn maps virtually guaranteeing an additional district determined by black voters.

Changes to congressional maps in Louisiana and Alabama could reverberate nationally and boost Democratic chances of reclaiming control of the narrowly divided House. After the Alabama ruling, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted two Louisiana House seats from firmly Republican to coin toss in anticipation of new district lines being drawn in the coming months.

Civil rights groups and Democrats on Monday applauded Louisiana’s order, calling it a matter of representation. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said the case was “about simple math, basic justice and the rule of law.”

“I am confident that we will have a fair card in the near future,” he said in a statement.

The case now goes back to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a court with a conservative reputation.

In a statement, Assistant Attorney General Angelique Freel, the director of the civil division of the Louisiana Department of Justice, said: “Our job is to defend what the legislature has passed, and we trust the Fifth Circuit to see the merits will judge in accordance with the law.”

The map has been embroiled in political and legal controversy since the redistribution process began after the 2020 census, where a measure showed the state’s black population had grown by 3.8 percent, compared to a 6.3 percent decline in white population. inhabitants.

Mr Edwards vetoed the map in March 2022, citing concerns about unfair representation, but the legislature overruled his veto. A coalition including the NAACP Louisiana State Conferencethe Power coalition for justice and justice and nine Louisiana voters challenged the card in court soon after.

Last June, Judge Shelly D. Dick of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana struck down the map for being racially gerrymandered, ordering lawmakers to redraw it and create a second district with a majority of black voters.

Judge Dick, nominated for her seat by President Barack Obama, said the state’s bloc of black voters was either improperly packed into the Second Congressional District or split between the state’s five remaining districts, extending their influence beyond the black district. by a single majority.

Adam Liptak reporting contributed.