The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
Louisiana is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in a case that could toss out the state’s congressional boundaries and limit the extent race can be considered in the redistricting process nationwide.
The state filed a brief Wednesday in response to the high court’s request that parties to Louisiana v. Callais, a lawsuit that non-Black voters filed over a second majority Black district for the state in the U.S. House, address whether the legislature’s creation of that district violated the 14th 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The 14th Amendment, in part, covers representation in Congress, and the 15th Amendment prevents citizens from being denied the right to vote based on their race.
If the justices determine Louisiana violated the Constitution, it could undermine the Voting Rights Act. The legislation was approved in 1965 to bolster protections granted in the 14th and 15th amendments. It has been amended five times since then to strengthen its provisions, though voting rights advocates note federal court rulings over the past decade have chipped away at the law.
The state reluctantly drew a second majority Black district in 2024 in response to a federal judge ruling the state violated the Voting Rights Act with its 2022 map, which kept a single Black-majority district among Louisiana’s six U.S. House seats. Attorney General Liz Murrill, who previously defended the second Black district,now argues that adding another Black district was unconstitutional.
“I am grateful that the Court has now asked the parties to brief whether this entire system is constitutional. My answer: it is not,” Murrill said in a news release Wednesday. “Our Constitution sees neither black voters nor white voters; it sees only American voters.”
The justices’ new questions in the case came after the court made the rare move of punting their decision and scheduling additional arguments for Oct. 15. Murrill’s response to the court has ended state Republican leaders’ strange bedfellowship with Black voters who challenged the 2022 version of the congressional district map. Both supported the 2024 map, but their alliance came to an end once Black voters filed their own brief defending the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
“[Section 2] remains an appropriate and rational means of enforcing the Reconstruction Amendments,” lawyers for the Black voters wrote in their brief.
In a separate redistricting case, the state has already argued that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional. In Nairne v. Louisiana, Black voters challenged the constitutionality of state legislative maps that did not increase the number of majority Black districts to correspond with an increase in the share of Black residents in the state,
The Supreme Court’s decision in the Callais case could set the standard for the degree to which race can be considered during the election map-drawing process that must occur after each decennial census.
White voters in the Callais case who have challenged Louisiana’s current congressional districts have until Sept. 17 to respond to the briefs.
This is a developing story
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