Supreme Court now tosses out Louisiana lawsuit:
Supreme Court says Louisiana’s voting maps must be redrawn to add ANOTHER district where majority of residents are black: State was accused of violating election laws by diluting African-American vote
- The ruling was handed down with no dissenting opinions
- It follows a similar decision against the state of Alabama
- Lower courts had voiced concerns that Black voting power had been illegally diluted
The U.S. Supreme Court has tossed out a Republican-led bid to overturn a ruling that said Black voting rights had been diluted in Louisiana after officials redrew its electoral map.
In a short order published on Monday (June 26), justices refused to rule on the case, sending it back to be decided by a lower court.
The move came after a senior Republican official had sought the backing of America’s top court after Black voters accused the Pelican State of discrimination.
Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin wanted to quash a federal judge’s decision that the map delineating Louisiana’s six U.S. House of Representatives districts was done so on racial grounds.
One-third of Louisiana’s residents are Black.
Justices went a step further two weeks ago in a similar case involving Alabama, directly ordering the state by 5-4 to overhaul its electoral boundaries.
The court found then that race had played a role in the changes to the voting map contrary to the federal Voting Rights Act.
In that ruling, judges elected not to further roll back protections contained in the Voting Rights Act as it had done in two major decisions in the past decade.
The Louisiana case will now go forward to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ahead of next year’s elections to choose a new House of Representatives.
The plaintiffs said the Republican-drawn unlawfully packed large numbers of Black voters into a single district and dispersed the rest into the five others in numbers too small to enable them to elect their preferred candidates.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, had vetoed the congressional map approved by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature.
But state lawmakers moved ahead with a motion to override that veto.
Governor John Bel Edwards had unsuccessfully tried to block the overhaul of the electoral map
One of the lawsuits claimed the plan ‘continues the State of Louisiana’s long history of maximizing political power for white citizens by disenfranchising and discriminating against Black Louisianans.’
The plaintiffs in court papers said that ‘stark racially polarized voting almost universally leads to the electoral defeat of Black-preferred candidates’ in Louisiana.
Electoral districts in the United States are redrawn each decade to reflect population changes as measured by a national census, last taken in 2020.
In most states, such redistricting is done by the party in power, which can lead to map manipulation for partisan gain.
Democrats have accused Republicans of exploiting state legislature majorities to draw electoral maps that dilute the clout of Black and other minority voters.
Republicans have said the consideration of race in drawing electoral maps must be limited.