(Bloomberg) -- The US Supreme Court will take up a new clash over the use of race in redistricting, agreeing to hear arguments on a Louisiana congressional map that creates an additional majority-Black voting district.
The justices said they will review a lower court ruling that declared the map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander – even though Louisiana was responding to a different court’s decision that the state probably needed a second majority-Black district to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
The clash will test the tension between two lines of Supreme Court precedents. The court has interpreted the Constitution’s equal protection clause as limiting the use of race in redistricting, but the justices have also read the Voting Rights Act to require creation of heavily minority districts in some cases.
The Supreme Court previously intervened in the Louisiana case to allow the disputed map to be used for tomorrow’s election, giving Democrats a likely seat pickup. The court will now consider whether the map can be in effect in 2026 and the rest of the decade.
The multilayered nature of the fight has created unusual dynamics. Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, a Republican, joined with voters represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in urging the Supreme Court to intervene.
Jagged Map
The fight started with a lawsuit pressed by voters who said the Voting Rights Act required a second predominantly Black district in a state that has six congressional seats and a 33% Black population. The voters won a ruling requiring a second district, and the Supreme Court eventually let that ruling take effect in 2023, weeks after backing a majority-Black district in Alabama in a similar fight.
But after Louisiana enacted a new map, a different group of voters sued on the grounds that the state had relied too heavily on race in creating the majority-Black 6th District. The district runs a jagged course over 250 miles from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, scooping in heavily Black areas along the way.
That case went before a three-judge panel, which on a 2-1 decision on April 30 blocked the new map as unconstitutional. The Supreme Court reinstated the districts weeks later, indicating that the lower court ruling had come too close to the election to take effect.
Murrill told the Supreme Court in her appeal that the state was like a ball “stuck in an endless game of ping-pong.” She pointed to a 2017 Supreme Court ruling that said states should have “breathing room” to navigate the competing requirements of the Voting Rights Act and the equal protection clause.
Murrill says the Louisiana State Legislature was focused on complying with the earlier court decision while protecting certain Republican representatives including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise. The map prompted the retirement of Republican Representative Garret Graves, whose Baton Rouge-area district was carved up to create the new lines.
The voters represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund told the justices the lower court ruling “deprived the legislature of the flexibility needed to remedy an identified VRA violation in accordance with its own policy priorities.” The group originally advocated for more compact districts but now backs the lines drawn by the state.
The voters who challenged the map say the Voting Rights Act doesn’t actually require the creation of a second majority-Black district, notwithstanding the earlier court fight. They said Louisiana had drawn a “brutal, bizarrely-shaped racial gerrymander unjustifiable under the Voting Rights Act.”
The cases are Louisiana v. Callais, 24-109, and Robinson v. Callais, 24-110.
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