Supreme Court Urged to Uphold States’ Authority to Redraw Congressional Maps

WASHINGTON — Twenty state attorneys general on Monday urged the Supreme Court to reaffirm that states have the constitutional right to redraw congressional district lines when they believe political lines have been drawn in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

The request came in the form of a 38-page amicus brief filed in the case Lousiana v. Callais, which the justices are expected to hear sometime in March.

The case represents the latest chapter in a series of legal disputes over race and gerrymandering in the state.

Louisiana v. Callais and an earlier, related lawsuit, Robinson v. Callais, are both challenges to a congressional map, known as S.B. 8, that the Louisiana legislature adopted earlier this year after a federal court tossed out a previous map on the grounds that it likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Section 2 prohibits any and all election practices, including the creation of district maps, that might result in a denial of or barrier to an individual’s right to vote based on race.

When it comes to alleged gerrymandering, cases like Louisiana and Robinson often revolve around the argument that the map in question would dilute the votes, and therefore the voting power of the state’s Black residents.

The map tossed out by the federal court last year was created in 2022 and denoted that only one of the state’s six congressional districts would have a majority of Black voters residing within it, this at a time when the 2020 census showed a third of the state’s population is Black.

Louisiana lawmakers then went back to the table and came up with a new map it submitted to the court earlier this year.

The new map includes a second Black-majority district, stretching from Shreveport in the northwest corner of the state all the way down to Baton Rouge in the southern part of the state.

Though the lawmakers hoped the new map would pass muster, it was soon challenged in court by a group of non-Black voters, who complained that the new map was a racial gerrymander and an unconstitutional infringement on their right to vote.

A three-judge federal court panel agreed, and barred the state from using the new map, but in May, a divided Supreme Court intervened and put the district court’s order on hold — in the process ensuring the state would use S.B. 8 in the 2024 general election.

The state and the plaintiffs in the original case both petitioned the Supreme Court to settle the matter once and for all.

In its filing with the court, the state argues that it is essentially in a no win situation, trapped between competing court orders and as a result, in an endless cycle of trying to comply with the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection clause, only to wind up being sued by parties who believe they’ve been slighted by the submitted map.

The voters, meanwhile, want the justices to affirm the lower court’s ruling.

In the petition filed Monday, the state attorneys general throw their support behind the Louisiana lawmakers, arguing they had every right to enact a congressional map that included two majority-Black districts after their first attempt at a map was found legally wanting.

“States are entitled to ‘breathing room’ when they redraw electoral maps to address likely violations of the Voting Rights Act,” they wrote, citing an earlier Supreme Court case, Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections.

“Federal courts that deny states that flexibility improperly intrude on the states’ primary responsibility over redistricting within their own jurisdictions,” they said.

They conclude by saying they believe the lawmakers in Louisiana took steps to “adopt reasonable compliance measures.” They further contend if there’s one branch in a position to revise the statutes and clarify the rules, it should be Congress, “not this court.”

“The court should leave to Congress the policy questions of whether and how to alter the requirements for establishing a Section 2 vote dilution claim,” they wrote in closing.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and at https://twitter.com/DanMcCue