WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is halfway to the next once-a-decade census, but the Supreme Court is still dealing with lawsuits that grew out of the last one.
The justices on Monday are taking up a challenge to Louisiana’s congressional map, which was drawn so that, for the first time, two of its six districts have majority Black populations that elected Black Democrats to Congress. Black Louisianans make up about one-third of the state’s population.
Just two years ago, the court ruled 5-4 that Alabama discriminated against Black voters by adopting a congressional map with just one majority Black district, in violation of the landmark federal Voting Rights Act.
The Louisiana case features an unusual alliance of the Republican-led state government, which added a second majority Black district to essentially comply with the Alabama ruling, and civil rights groups that more often find themselves fighting the state’s redistricting plans.
A decision should come by late June.
How did we get here?
It has been a winding road. The court fight over Louisiana’s congressional districts has lasted three years. Two maps were blocked by lower courts, and the Supreme Court has intervened twice. Most recently, the court ordered the new map to be used in the 2024 election.
The state’s Republican-dominated legislature drew a new congressional map in 2022 to account for population shifts reflected in the 2020 Census. But the changes effectively maintained the status quo of five Republican-leaning majority white districts and one Democratic-leaning majority Black district.
Civil rights advocates won a lower court ruling that the districts likely discriminated against Black voters.
The Supreme Court put the ruling on hold while it took up the Alabama case. The justices allowed both states to use congressional maps in the 2022 elections even though both had been ruled likely discriminatory by federal judges.
The high court eventually affirmed the ruling from Alabama, which led to a new map and a second district that could elect a Black lawmaker. The justices returned the Louisiana case 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 gave lawmakers in Louisiana a deadline of early 2024 to draw a new map or face the possibility of a court-imposed map.
The state complied and drew a new map.
The court must decide: politics or race?
One of the questions before the court is whether race was the predominant factor driving the new map. That’s what white Louisiana voters claimed in their separate lawsuit challenging the new districts. A three-judge court agreed.
But Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, and other state officials argue that politics, not race, helped set the boundaries. The congressional map provides politically safe districts for House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, fellow Republicans.
The decision “reflects the imminent reality that Louisiana would be projected to lose one of five Republican congressional seats” when a court or the legislature adopted a second majority Black district, state Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill wrote in court papers.
Some lawmakers have also noted that the Republican lawmaker whose district was greatly altered in the new map supported a GOP opponent of Landry in the 2023 governor’s race. Former Rep. Garret Graves chose not to seek reelection under the new map.
The Supreme Court faces a lurking issue
Louisiana argues that dueling lawsuits over redistricting make it almost impossible for states to know what to do. So the state has a suggestion that, if adopted, would mark an upheaval in redistricting.
The justices could declare that racial gerrymandering cases do not belong in federal courts, Murrill wrote.
The court’s conservative majority reached that conclusion for partisan gerrymandering in 2019. Justice Clarence Thomas said the court also should no longer decide race-based redistricting cases. “Drawing political districts is a task for politicians, not federal judges,” Thomas wrote last year in an opinion no other justice joined.
But the court doesn’t have to touch that issue to resolve the Louisiana case.
A Black Democrat won the new district
The reconfigured 6th Congressional District stretches across the state, linking parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge areas. The percentage of Black voters in the district jumped from about 25% to 55%, based on data collected by the state.
The district’s voters last year elected Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat. He returned to the House of Representatives, where he had served decades earlier.
New election dates
The state also has changed the state’s election process so that the so-called jungle primary will be replaced by partisan primary elections in the spring, followed by a November showdown between the party nominees.
The change means candidates can start gathering signatures in September to get on the primary ballot for 2026.
A Supreme Court decision invalidating the congressional map would leave little time to draw a new one before then.
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Cline contributed to this report from Baton Rouge, La.
