Judges reject Louisiana congressional map with second majority-Black House district

A panel of federal judges rejected a newly drawn congressional map Tuesday that would have created a second majority-Black district in Louisiana. The move tees up a potential redistricting battle in the nation’s high court.

In a 2-1 ruling, the judges ruled the new maps constituted an “impermissible racial gerrymander” in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.

“The Voting Rights Act protects minority voters against dilution resulting from redistricting maps that ‘crack’ or ‘pack’ a large and ‘geographically compact’ minority population,” the ruling stated. “On the other hand, the Equal Protection Clauses applies strict scrutiny to redistricting that is grounded predominantly on race.”

The updated congressional maps would have kept the 2nd Congressional District a majority-Black district, and made 6th Congressional District — represented by Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) — the second.

The Louisiana state Legislature approved the maps in January, and Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed the legislation into law days later.

Liz Murrill, attorney general for the Bayou State, said she plans to meet with the Louisiana secretary of state to discuss next steps.

“We will of course be seeking Supreme Court review. I’ve said all along the Supreme Court needs to clear this up. The jurisprudence and litigation involving redistricting has made it impossible to not have federal judges drawing maps. It’s not right and they need to fix it,” she wrote on the social platform X.

The maps came after a nearly-two-year battle over state’s congressional lines. In 2022, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) vetoed a set of maps passed by the state Legislature, arguing it violated the Voting Rights Act by creating only one majority-Black district in a state where Black one-third of the population is Black. The state Legislature eventually overrode Bel Edwards’s veto.

A federal judge ordered the state Legislature later that year to establish a second majority-Black district with new lines, but the Supreme Court eventually allowed for the map stand during November midterms, and paused the judge’s ruling.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling last year that Alabama’s congressional map likely violated the Voting Rights Act, the high court unfroze the case and sent it back to a federal appeals court, which ordered the creation of a new map by mid-January.

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, chaired by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., slammed Tuesday’s ruling and said backers of the new map would likely apply for an emergency order from the Supreme Court to keep the map while the appeals process plays out.

“The court’s ruling today unnecessarily puts Louisianians’ right to vote in a very precarious position,” Holder said in a statement. ““This decision is a radical departure from multiple recent court decisions regarding Louisiana’s congressional map. It is so wildly out of step from settled law and recent Supreme Court precedent that the ideological nature of the decision could not be more clear.”

The majority ruling, from U.S. District Judges David Joseph and Robert Summerhays, said “race predominated” in the drawing of the new district, violating the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment

Judge Carl Stewart disagreed, arguing the majority did not take enough consideration into the political motivations behind the new map.

“The panel majority is correct in noting that this is a mixed motive case,” Stewart wrote in his dissent. “But to note this and then to subsequently make a conclusory determination as to racial predominance is hard to comprehend.”

The decision is a temporary win for Graves, whose district was significantly altered by the new map. When it was passed earlier this year, Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for the nonpartisan election handicapper Cook Political Report, wrote on X that Graves’s district “is now a virtually certain Dem gain.” 

The new map would likely keep five incumbents safe, including Rep. Troy Carter, the only Democrat of the state’s congressional delegation, and four Republicans including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

The panel set a May 6 status conference, The Associated Press reported. State election officials ordered the congressional maps be finalized by May 15, the news wire added.