US Supreme Court orders Louisiana electoral map case to be argued again

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By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Friday to rule in a dispute involving a Louisiana electoral map that raised the number of Black-majority congressional districts in the state, with the justices ordering the case to be argued again.

State officials and civil rights groups have appealed a lower court’s ruling that found the map laying out Louisiana’s six U.S. House of Representatives districts – with two Black-majority districts, up from one previously – violated the U.S. Constitution’s promise of equal protection.

Friday’s unusual one-sentence order was unsigned and indicated that the Supreme Court’s scheduling for the argument would be forthcoming, as would any additional questions the court may ask the parties to address. Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s decision against deciding the matter now.

The court heard arguments in the dispute on March 24.

The map prompted a challenge by non-Black voters. The state and the rights groups are seeking to preserve the map.

Black people comprise nearly a third of Louisiana’s population.

The case involved tensions between protecting the voting rights of minorities and adhering to the principle of equal protection, which limits the use of race in redistricting.

During arguments in the case in March, lawyers for Louisiana argued that the map was not drawn impermissibly by the Republican-controlled state legislature with race as the primary motivation, as the lower court found last year. The map’s design, the Republican-governed state argued, also sought to protect Republican incumbents including House Speaker Mike Johnson and No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise, who both represent congressional districts in the state.

Black voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

“In an election year we faced the prospect of a federal court-drawn map that placed in jeopardy the speaker of the House, the House majority leader and our representative on the Appropriations Committee,” Benjamin Aguinaga, solicitor general of Louisiana, told the justices during the arguments. “And so in light of those facts, we made the politically rational decision. We drew our own map to protect them.”

Arguments in the case centered on Louisiana’s response to U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick’s 2022 finding that an earlier map likely violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark law barring racial discrimination in voting, and whether the state relied too heavily on race in devising a remedial map adding a second Black-majority district.

Boundaries of legislative districts across the country are redrawn to reflect population changes every decade.

In June 2022, Dick ruled that a map adopted earlier that year by the legislature containing only one Black-majority congressional district had unlawfully harmed Black voters. Dick concluded that the map likely violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered the addition of a second Black-majority district.

The Supreme Court in 2023 left Dick’s ruling in place, and it previously allowed the map to be used in the 2024 election.

Louisiana’s legislature in January 2024 approved a new map featuring two Black-majority districts. Later that month, a group of 12 Louisiana voters identifying themselves in court papers as “non-African American” sued to block the redrawn map. A lawyer for the plaintiffs did not respond to requests to provide the racial breakdown of the plaintiffs.

A three-judge panel in a 2-1 ruling in April 2024 blocked the map, finding that the legislature relied too heavily on race in the map’s design in violation of the Constitution’s equal protection provision. 

The Constitution’s 14th Amendment contains the equal protection language. Ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the American Civil War, the amendment addressed issues relating to the rights of formerly enslaved Black people.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)