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On Monday, Louisiana defended its congressional map in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The first words out of Solicitor General J. Benjamin Aguiñaga’s mouth reflected the long road to get to that point.
“Louisiana would rather not be here,” he said. “We would rather not be caught between two diametrically opposed visions of what our congressional map should look like. But this has become life as usual for the states under this court’s voting cases.”
In 2022, the Legislature approved a congressional map in which only one of six districts is majority-minority, despite the state’s population being roughly one-third Black. Federal courts found that the map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Rather than continuing to litigate and risk having a judge draw a map, the Legislature drafted a new map with two Black districts, found in Senate Finance Chair Glen Womack’s Senate Bill 8. A group of “non-African American” voters successfully challenged that map, though the Supreme Court put that decision on hold and allowed the state to use it in last year’s elections. Then-state Sen. Cleo Fields won in the new Black-majority district and returned to Congress.
The main issue is whether race was the predominant factor that dictated the new district’s boundaries, which would be considered unconstitutional, or whether political factors played a leading role, which the court previously has declared to be within the “breathing room” that states are afforded to draw their maps.
“I am confident that the court will find that politics was the predominant factor in the drawing of this map,” Fields said in a statement released after arguments concluded.
Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis, one of the plaintiffs who challenged the original 2022 map, was able to hear the arguments in person. He told LaPolitics that the map the original plaintiffs proposed fit traditional redistricting criteria better than the one the Legislature ultimately adopted.
However, the Legislature chose a different map that still had a second majority-Black district, but that protected Congresswoman Julia Letlow and Speaker Mike Johnson.
“The court has allowed states to make districts based on incumbency protection,” Lewis said.
The court’s conservative majority questioned whether a district that slashes across the state from Baton Rouge to Shreveport is appropriate, given that compactness and keeping communities with similar values together typically are important criteria.
“It’s a snake that runs from one end of the state to the other,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “I mean, how is that compact?”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed to wonder whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act might have outlived its usefulness. Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested more than once that the act was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.
Still, court-watchers noted that the same six conservative justices also sounded skeptical about an Alabama map that the court subsequently upheld as required under the Voting Rights Act.
“Bottom line: reading the tea leaves in the Louisiana case is a fool’s errand,” says Nina Totenberg, a journalist who has covered the court for decades.
A decision is expected by the summer.
“With all due respect, we’d rather not be back at the podium this fall defending a new map against a new challenge,” Aguiñaga said in closing. “This court’s cases promise breathing room. We operated in that breathing room in drawing District 6. And if this court holds otherwise, then respectfully I don’t know what this court’s voting cases mean.”
—They said it: “I know y’all not used to so much good news. Y’all are like shocked.” –Gov. Jeff Landry, referring to recent economic wins in Louisiana, speaking to the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge
