The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will decide the future of Louisiana’s congressional map in a pair of cases about whether the state unconstitutionally discriminated in its second attempt to draw district lines.
The justices will review the two cases challenging a lower-court ruling that found that the state likely violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution when it drew its newest map with a second Black-majority congressional district to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
The Supreme Court previously ruled that Louisiana could use that newest map for Tuesday’s election. But a decision from the justices in these cases could ripple beyond Louisiana and impact the rules for minority representation nationwide.
The two cases stemmed from a voter-led constitutional challenge to the state’s second map since the 2020 census. The state had redrawn its first map in response to a separate legal challenge under the Voting Rights Act.
The voters who challenged the second map convinced a three-judge panel that, in trying to draw a map that complied with the VRA, the state had violated the Constitution when it drew the second Black-majority district. They argued that the state had gone further than required to draw the second district, which discriminated against other voters in the state.
“Legislative session transcripts and trial testimony demonstrate the Legislature established an unlawful racial target, the Legislature would not compromise it, and the Legislature subordinated traditional criteria to reach it. The Legislature’s purposeful racial quota of two Black seats demonstrates racial predominance,” the voters argued in their Supreme Court filings.
In its court filing, Louisiana urged the justices to overturn the lower-court ruling, arguing that legislators had drawn the map as a “rescue operation” to make sure to protect powerful incumbents, including Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La.
The state urged the justices to reverse the lower court and potentially make a broader ruling to provide “clarity to States attempting to square the VRA and the Constitution.”
The first map the state drew after the 2020 census had a Black majority in one of its six congressional districts, the New Orleans-based seat held by Democratic Rep. Troy Carter.
That plan faced a successful challenge under the Voting Rights Act from civil rights group and Black voters who argued that the map deliberately limited the power of Black voters.
The Supreme Court temporarily paused that first redrawing of the map while a separate case over Alabama’s congressional map played out. Then Louisiana drew the current map in January with a second Black-majority district, which stretched from Baton Rouge to Shreveport.
A different group of voters successfully challenged that map in the current cases, convincing a three-judge panel that the new map likely violated the Constitution. However, the Supreme Court paused the redrawing process for this election cycle.
The case means that the Supreme Court may issue rulings on constitutional gerrymandering claims for the second time in as many terms. In May, the court’s six conservatives ruled that South Carolina did not violate the Constitution by moving Black voters from one congressional district to another for partisan advantage. The South Carolina case did not involve the VRA.
The justices will likely hear the case sometime this term and issue a decision before the conclusion of the term at the end of June.
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