Federal Judges Reject Quick Addition of Majority-black District in Louisiana

A panel of three federal judges rejected a new congressional map Tuesday that would have given Louisiana a second majority-Black House district, adding to uncertainty about district lines as the state prepared for the fall congressional elections.

The 2-1 decision prohibits the adoption of a plan set up by the Legislature in January after a different federal judge barred a map for 2022. The previous plan had a single Black-majority district and five predominantly white districts in a state with a Black population of roughly one-third.

“We will, of course, seek Supreme Court review,” state Attorney General Liz Murrill announced on social media. “The jurisprudence and litigation surrounding redistricting have made it impossible to avoid having federal judges draw maps.” It’s not right, and they should rectify it.” Gov. Jeff Landry and Murrill supported the new design during the January legislative session after a different federal judge overturned a map with only one primarily Black district.

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, chaired by former Attorney General Eric Holder, said supporters of the new map will most likely seek an emergency order from the Supreme Court to keep the current map in place while appeals are pending. U.S. District Judges David Joseph and Robert Summerhays, both chosen by former President Donald Trump, concluded the new map violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause because “race was the predominate factor” in its development.

Judge Carl Stewart dissented, claiming that the majority underestimated the political motivations behind the map’s creation. “The panel majority is correct in noting that this is a mixed motive case,” Stewart said in his opinion. “But to note this and then to subsequently make a conclusory determination as to racial predominance is hard to comprehend.”

The decision implies that the November election map remains unknown. Another federal district judge, Shelly Dick of Baton Rouge, has found that the state is likely violating the federal Voting Rights Act by dividing Black voters who are not in majority-Black District 2 among five other congressional districts.

However, the divided federal panel ruled on Tuesday that “outside of southeast Louisiana, the State’s Black population is dispersed.” The majority criticized the new mostly-Black district, which spanned across the state from Shreveport in the northwest to southeast Louisiana, connecting black communities in the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge metro areas. Joseph and Summerhays stated that they would not decide on the possibility of constructing a second majority-Black district following the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

“However, we do emphasize that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act never requires race to predominate in drawing Congressional districts at the sacrifice of traditional districting principles,” they said in a statement.

The panel scheduled a status conference for May 6. Meanwhile, the case before Judge Dick in Baton Rouge remains open, and state election officials say they need to know the district boundaries by May 15. The sign-up process for the fall elections in Louisiana begins in mid-July.

The ruling provides new hope for Rep. Garret Graves, a white Republican incumbent whose district has been significantly transformed by the new map. It also poses difficulties for state Sen. Cleo Fields, a Democrat and former member of Congress who has expressed his intention to run in the new district. Rep. Troy Carter, the state’s only Democrat and Black member of the current congressional delegation, condemned the decision. “This is just plain wrong,” Carter wrote on the social media platform X on Tuesday evening.

The revised plan keeps five incumbents in safe districts: Carter and four white Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise. It was challenged by 12 self-identified non-African American voters, who claimed the districts constituted unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.

Supporters of the new map claimed that politics, not race, was the driving force behind its formation and that Landry’s endorsement strengthened that position. Graves, who supported Landry’s opponent in the governor’s election last November, was put at a disadvantage by the proposal.

On Tuesday night, the Associated Press called Landry’s office to get a comment.

The majority of Tuesday’s opinion accepted the argument. “However, given the slim majority Republicans hold in the United States House of Representatives, even if such personal or intra-party animosity did or does exist, it is difficult to fathom that Louisiana Republicans would intentionally concede a seat to a Democratic candidate on those bases,” they said in a statement.

The decision was the latest stage in a long-running court struggle over redistricting, which occurs every ten years to account for demographic fluctuations reflected in census results. Louisiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature designed a new map in 2022 that favored all six existing incumbents. The map was vetoed by then-Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards, but the majority-Republican Legislature overrode him, resulting in a judicial battle.

Dick ordered an injunction against the plan in June 2022, stating that the challengers’ argument that it violated the Voting Rights Act was likely to be successful. As the case was being appealed, the United States Supreme Court announced an unexpected decision favoring Black voters in an Alabama congressional redistricting lawsuit.

Dick agreed with challengers who said that the 2022 plan concentrated a large number of votes in one district — District 2, which runs from New Orleans to the Baton Rouge area — while “cracking” the remaining Black population by apportioning it to other predominantly white districts.

Last November, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals set a January deadline for the state to create a new congressional district. Landry, who was the state’s attorney general when he was elected to replace the term-limited Edwards, convened a special session to redraw the map, arguing that the Legislature should do it rather than a federal judge.

The new design differs from sample maps proposed earlier by backers of a new majority-Black district, which would have formed a new district primarily spanning the state’s northeast.

The opponents of the most recent map filed their complaint in the Western District of Louisiana, a federal court system dominated by Republican-appointed judges. Former President Barack Obama nominated Dick to the federal bench. Former President Bill Clinton nominated Stewart, the panel’s dissenter, to the Fifth United States Circuit Court of Appeals.

Cases involving constitutional problems and remapping are frequently assigned to panels of two district judges and one appeals court circuit judge.