WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) —
The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a new redistricting case Louisiana’s congressional map with two predominantly black districts.
The court won’t hear arguments until early next year and the 2024 elections will proceed under the disputed map, which could boost Democrats’ chances of retaking the closely divided House of Representatives.
A lower court had declared the card invalid, but judges allowed its use in 2024 after an emergency appeal from the state and civil rights groups.
The question before the justices is whether the state relied too heavily on race in creating a second-majority black district.
Monday’s court ruling is the latest step in the federal court battle over Louisiana’s congressional districts that has lasted more than two years. Louisiana has had two congressional maps blocked by lower courts and the Supreme Court has intervened twice.
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 essentially preserved the status quo of five white districts with a Republican majority and one Black district with a Democratic majority in a state that is about a third black.
Advocates for the state’s black population noted that civil rights activists challenged the map in a federal court in Baton Rouge and won a ruling by U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick that the districts likely discriminated against black voters.
The Supreme Court stayed Dick’s ruling while it considered a similar case from Alabama. The justices allowed both states to use the maps in the 2022 elections, even though both had been declared likely discriminatory by federal judges.
The Supreme Court ultimately upheld Alabama’s ruling, leading to a new map and a second district that could elect a black lawmaker. The justices sent the Louisiana case back to federal court, expecting new maps to be available before the 2024 election.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave Louisiana lawmakers a deadline of early 2024 to draw a new map or face the possibility of a court-ordered map.
Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, had defended Louisiana’s congressional map as Louisiana’s attorney general. But now he urged lawmakers to approve a new map with another black majority district during a special session in January. He supported a map that created a new, predominantly black district stretching across the state and connecting parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge areas.
Another group of plaintiffs, a group of self-identified non-African Americans, filed suit in western Louisiana, claiming the new map was also illegal because it was overly defined by race, unconstitutional. A divided panel of federal judges ruled 2-1 in their favor in April, blocking use of the new card.
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to suspend that ruling and allow the map to be used.
The vote was unusual because the dissenting votes came from the three liberal justices, who supported black voters on redistricting cases. But in an opinion by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, they said their vote was motivated by their view that there was time to draw a new map, and by their disagreement with previous court orders that cited the approach to elections to lower elections to block. judicial decisions.
“There is little risk of voter confusion if a new map is imposed so far before the November election,” Jackson wrote in May.
In adopting the districts used this year, Landry and his allies said the driving factor was politics, not race. The congressional map offers politically safe districts for House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, fellow Republicans. Some lawmakers also noted that the only Republican whose district was significantly changed on the new map Representative Garret Gravesendorsed a Republican opponent of Landry during last fall’s gubernatorial race. Graves chose not to stand for re-election under the new map.
Among the candidates in the new district is Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields, a former congresswoman who is Black.