Lawyers representing a group of Louisiana voters challenging the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district in the state told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that a key provision of the Voting Rights Act is “inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution.”
The filing came in a dispute that could lead to a major decision on voting rights and redistricting. The dispute began several years ago, when a group of Black voters filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the congressional map adopted by the Louisiana Legislature in 2022. That map contained only one majority-Black district, although nearly a third of the state’s population is Black. The Black voters contended that the 2022 map diluted the votes of Black residents.
A federal district court agreed with the Black voters that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits election practices that result in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote.
A federal appeals court in New Orleans upheld that ruling, and it instructed Louisiana to draw a new map by Jan. 15, 2024. If it failed to do so, the state could face the prospect that the district court would draw one instead.
After the Louisiana Legislature adopted a new map that contained a second majority-Black district, the challengers in the case now before the court – who describe themselves as “non-African American” – went to federal court, where they argued that the 2024 map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander – that is, it unconstitutionally sorted the state’s voters based primarily on their race.
A three-judge federal district court agreed with the challengers, but the Supreme Court paused that court’s ruling, allowing the state to use the 2024 map in the 2024 elections.
