Nearly two years after a federal judge said that Louisiana’s congressional map diluted Black voting power, Black voters are at risk of voting for a second time in an election under a plan that likely violates the Voting Rights Act.
In response to the judge’s ruling, the state’s Republican legislature had created a second majority-African American district in the state’s six district congressional plan. But now, a different federal court has said that adding the second majority-Black district is unconstitutional.
The new ruling, issued Tuesday by two judges appointed by former President Donald Trump, leaves the state without a congressional map six months before the election and has fueled complaints of political gamesmanship from critics on the left who fret that the clash could provide another opening for opponents of the nation’s premier civil rights law to attack one of its remaining pillars.
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The legal fight may influence which party controls the US House next year as the second majority-Black district would likely vote for a Democrat.
Some Louisiana officials, meanwhile, contend that the ongoing legal fight over the congressional map has put them in a tough spot – caught between the Voting Rights Act’s demands for empowering minority voters and the Constitution’s limits on the government’s ability to consider race at all.
They say the Supreme Court must clear up what they contend is an ambiguous legal landscape – despite the justices reaffirming their position only last year in an unexpected 5-4 decision that sided with Black voters in Alabama.
The Louisiana federal court that struck down the most recent congressional map held a hearing Monday on next steps. The court ordered briefs to be filed by close of business Tuesday that address whether it is feasible for the legislature to draw a new map in time for November’s elections. State officials have said they need to know the contours of the district by May 15.
In a statement posted on social media, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the state should be allowed to implement the map passed by the state legislature that allows for two Black-majority districts – or failing that, revert to the map used in the 2022 election with a single district in which African American voters are in the majority.
She said the dispute appears headed to the Supreme Court this week. The Black voters who are defending the second majority-Black district have also signaled they will likely seek an emergency intervention from the Supreme Court.
The current turmoil reflects a larger pattern of courts striking down redistricting plans as discriminating against voters of color, only for those plans to remain in place for elections because of procedural delays and other litigative gambits. How the high court handles the dispute will signal the degree with which the justices will tolerate legal maneuvers that prolong the resolution of redistricting disputes that crop every decade after the census.
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