United States—The United States Supreme Court approved a January 2019-era electoral map with two of the Bayou State’s six congressional districts slanted in favor of Black populations, in its Wednesday ruling so these can be used on the November elections that determines which party will control the US House of Representatives.
Supreme Court Intervention
The justices who responded to a directive from state officials and a group of African American voters halted the motion of the three-judge panel from a federal court to invalidate Louisiana’s new map. The map had two black-majority districts in the House of Representatives against only one that had been documented in the past. Black voters statistically lean towards the Democratic Party, as reported by Reuters.
On April 30, the panel of justices ruled 2-1 that the map was mainly influenced by race, in violation of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection. It ordered that a new map be drawn.
The panel’s ruling was the most recent legal dispute among many in the protracted battle of how Louisiana’s US House districts are drawn. Republicans hold the current House majority with a 217 to 213 lead. Endless court cases surrounding redistricting in several states may definitely determine if the Republicans keep the ties or the Democrats come back to power.
The Republican-dominated Louisiana legislature passed the new map in January of 2020, including a second district with a Black majority after US District Judge Shelly Dick ruled in 2022 that the previous Republican-mapped area was unlawful because it hurt Black voters Dick found out that likely the state legislature before revising the existing map violated the Voting Rights Act, an important 1965 law which bars discrimination in voting on grounds of race.
Legal Implications and Political Ramifications
The year 2023 had the Supreme Court confirming the ruling of Dick’s ruling in place.
Conversely, if Dick’s map had been implemented, Black voters would have had the majority in one of the six voting districts while representing nearly a third of the population of Louisiana.
In January, a group of Louisiana voters who claimed to be “non-African American” took up the challenge of the newly drawn map. The challengers contended that it was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that went against the 14th Amendment equal protection clause, which forbids states from using race as the main target while drawing electoral districts.
It accompanied the ratification in 1868—the Civil War’s aftermath—of an amendment addressing the rights of the now-freed Black people.
The judicial committee provided that it would be in favor of the challengers and thus ordered Louisiana’s legislature to draw up a new map by June 3. In this case, the committee might have implemented its own map, which would not have undeniably included another majority-black district instead, as per some legal experts.
Two judges, who the Republican former president appointed, Donald Trump, were in the plurality, while a judge appointed by the Democrat former president, William Clinton, was in dissent.
Next Steps and Future Outlook
That decision called out the state officials and Black Louisiana voters with civil rights groups to bring on the Supreme Court an injunction until an appeal is formally filed.
Nancy Landry, the Republican Secretary of State of Louisiana, filed papers with the courts stating that she needed to have the map of the congressional election in place by Wednesday to adequately administer it.
Division Among Justices
The Supreme Court is composed of 6 conservatives. On Wednesday, only three of its liberal justices dissented from the decision. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asserted that the Supreme Court’s action under the balancing test, which weighs judicial decisions to change rules prior to elections against voter confusion, was not well-merited, given that it is early November, as reported by Reuters.
“There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out from the November election,” Jackson wrote. “In fact, we have often denied stays of redistricting orders issued as close or closer to an election.”