The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a new congressional map that includes a second majority-black Louisiana House district can be used in November, after a lower court rejected that map earlier this month.
The high court stayed a ruling by a panel of federal judges two weeks ago that halted the use of a new Louisiana House map signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry (R) in January that includes two majority Black House districts.
The dispute concerns long-running litigation surrounding Louisiana’s congressional maps. The initial map was subject to a Voting Rights Act lawsuit in 2022 after the state Legislature approved a House map that included a majority-black House district; then-Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) vetoed the map because black residents make up a third of the state, but his veto was later overridden.
The case reached the Supreme Court, which kept the map in place for the 2022 midterm elections, but ultimately decided last year to send the case back to a federal appeals court, which ruled that the state had to create a map of the Chamber with two black-majority districts.
Louisiana finally approved new maps that created two majority-black districts at the expense of Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) in the state’s 6th Congressional District.
Twelve non-black voters in the state filed a lawsuit against the new House map in February, alleging that “the State engaged in explicit racial segregation of voters and intentional discrimination against voters on the basis of race.”
A panel of federal judges sided with those voters in a ruling earlier this month, arguing that the new map violated the equal protection clause. However, the Supreme Court on Wednesday was not persuaded by that argument, allowing the Congressional map to be used in November.
Notably, however, the decision drew dissent from the court’s three liberal justices, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote in her dissent that she “would have let the District Court’s reparations process run its course before considering whether our emergency intervention was justified,” allowing consideration of the possibility of a new map.
The decision is a victory for Democrats because the party will likely pick up a Louisiana seat in the new congressional map. The party needs to win just a few seats in the lower house in November to regain control of the chamber.
Democrats are also likely to pick up another seat in Alabama, while Republicans are expected to pick up several seats in North Carolina after the state Legislature has been authorized to approve new congressional maps.
The chairman of the House Democrats’ campaign arm applauded the Supreme Court’s ruling in a statement.
“Today, the Supreme Court made clear that Louisiana voters will finally vote under a congressional map that ensures fair representation for communities of color that have been denied for too long,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee “This news is a much-needed victory for democracy and we are confident that in the next Congress we will add an additional member from Louisiana to our new Democratic majority.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
