Louisiana Can Keep Congressional Map That Allegedly Discriminates Against Black Voters, Appeals Court Rules

Topline

Louisiana will keep a new congressional map that only has one majority-Black district in it—at least for now—after an appeals court late Thursday blocked a lower court ruling that found the map unlawfully discriminated against Black voters.

A streetcar passes a polling station on December 10, 2016 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Key Facts

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals—considered to be one of the most conservative federal appeals courts in the country—issued a stay late Thursday night, which blocked a district court’s order directing Louisiana to draw new maps that wouldn’t unfairly dilute Black constituents’ votes.

The appeals judges did not explain their decision, which blocks the lower court’s ruling just as the case moves forward and until a final decision is made.

U.S. District Judge Shelly D. Dick ruled Monday that the map the state initially came up with likely violates the Voting Rights Act, which bars congressional maps that are racially discriminatory, and issued a preliminary injunction that blocked Louisiana from using its map as the case moved forward.

The plaintiffs challenging the map, including the NAACP, argued the state should create a second district that would be composed of majority-Black voters, noting the map the legislature passed meant Black voters only controlled approximately 17% of the state’s congressional districts despite making up 31.2% of its voting-age population.

Dick sided with them and ruled the legislature’s map would “irreparably harm” the Black voters who were plaintiffs in the case, while the maps the plaintiffs proposed—which had two majority-Black districts—“would actually … allow Black voters a genuine opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice.”

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which represented the plaintiffs in the case, has not yet responded to a request for comment on the appeals court’s ruling.

Crucial Quote

“Plaintiffs have demonstrated that they will suffer an irreparable harm if voting takes place in the 2022 Louisiana congressional elections based on a redistricting plan that violates federal law,” Dick wrote in her ruling initially blocking the map, also disputing the state government’s argument that trying to draw up a new map quickly before the election would “act like [a]

Chief Critic

“Louisiana’s 2022 congressional map … continues the State of Louisiana’s long history of maximizing political power for white citizens by disenfranchising and discriminating against Black Louisianans,” the challengers argued in their initial lawsuit against the map, saying the state’s map packs “large numbers of Black voters” into a single district and makes Black voters in the other five districts “an ineffective minority unable to participate equally in the electoral process.”

What To Watch For

The Louisiana legislature had called a special session to draw up new maps after Dick issued her ruling, which directed them to come up with a new way to divide up the districts by June 20. The New Orleans Advocate reports it’s now up in the air what that special session will look like. Now that it’s been called, the state Constitution may make it impossible to simply call it off, so lawmakers still might have to convene and then immediately adjourn.

Key Background

Louisiana is one of a number of states that are now facing legal battles over their congressional maps, as states redraw maps in response to the 2020 Census. While nearly all states’ congressional maps have been approved at this point, 15 states’ maps (including Louisiana) are still tied up in litigation, according to a tracker compiled by FiveThirtyEight. Florida’s redistricting maps have also been a source of concern for allegedly disenfranchising Black voters—and were similarly upheld by an appeals court—for instance, and Kansas’ map has been challenged for partisan and racial gerrymandering and could make it harder for the state’s sole Democratic member of Congress to get reelected. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments next term on Alabama’s congressional map, after temporarily allowing the state to use a map that’s been challenged for allegedly discriminating against Black voters.