(The Center Square) — The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Monday it will hear oral arguments next year in a case concerning Louisiana congressional district maps.
The court will take up the consolidated cases of Robinson v. Callais and Louisiana v. Callais, in which a three-judge panel from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana said the newest map drawn this year amounted to a racial gerrymander.
Lawmakers were compelled by a federal court order by U.S. District Court Judge Shelly Dick, a President Barack Obama appointee, to add a second Black-majority congressional district.
After the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to take up the case and lawmakers drew a new map, those were upheld on May 15 by a stay granted by the Supreme Court for Tuesday’s elections.
In Allen v. Milligan, litigation by the National Redistricting Foundation said the original maps draw by the Legislature violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices and procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.
Following the ruling in Milligan, Louisiana implemented a new map after two years of litigation driven by the NRF.
Marina Jenkins, the executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, said in a news release that “[F]or far too long Louisianians have had to contend with a map that was not representative of the people who live and vote there.
As held recently by multiple courts, the Voting Rights Act requires Louisiana to have a congressional map with two Black opportunity districts.”
“The lower court’s decision to block Louisiana’s new fair and representative map — ordered by a peer court after it considered two years of litigation to enforce Section 2 — was ideologically driven and inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court has a duty to uphold its own precedent and protect voters’ rights to equal representation as enshrined in the Voting Rights Act, and that is the argument we will be making to them.”
Historically, Black voters in Louisiana, constituting approximately one-third of the population, were largely underrepresented, with only one majority-Black congressional district among six.
The previously drawn map was found to violate Section 2 of the VRA, prompting the Louisiana Legislature to enact a new map in January 2024, which established two majority-Black districts.
Plaintiffs, with the support of the NRF, made a successful challenge against Louisiana’s gerrymandered congressional map in Robinson v. Ardoin, leading to the current congressional map enacted in 2024.
However, soon after, a lawsuit was filed against this new map by a group of “non-African American voters” who argued that the map constituted unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.
This claim was upheld by a three-judge panel, which dismissed the new map, “ignoring Supreme Court precedent upholding and enforcing Section 2 of the VRA set less than a year before in Allen v. Milligan,” according to the NRF.
“This should not be a difficult case for the Supreme Court to resolve. This is, after all, a Court that just last year affirmed the validity of essentially the same enforcement section of the Voting Rights Act,” said former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in a news release. “All Louisianans deserve, and by existing law are guaranteed, equal representation in Congress.”
“Federal law, the Supreme Court’s own precedent, and basic fairness dictate that Black Louisianans vote on truly representative and fair maps. For far too long race has been used — and continues to be used — to deny American citizens of that most basic feature of our democracy,” Holder said.
The NRF has been instrumental in this ongoing litigation, providing financial support and strategic guidance to a coalition of voters known as the Galmon plaintiffs.
The group submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, urging the justices to uphold Louisiana’s map which they say complies with the Voting Rights Act.
The Supreme Court’s decision, expected by late June or early July, could have lasting implications for voting rights not just in Louisiana but nationwide.
