Yesterday, the Supreme Court unanimously moved to make Louisiana’s congressional maps a less gerrymandered racist mess. A lower court in 2022 would have forced the Republican legislature to un-gerrymander the state but the Supreme Court put that on hold. They lifted the hold yesterday. CNN reported that “the justices reversed plans to hear the case themselves and lifted a hold they placed on a lower court’s order for a reworked redistricting regime. There were no noted dissents.” Basically, we’re talking about Alabama II, a decision that will result in another Black-majority southern seat.
The packed LA-02 district— with an outrageous partisan lean of D+56— is likely to be split in two, resulting in a New Orleans district and a Baton Rouge district. My guess is that either Julia Letlow or Garret Graves will be out of a district. If Graves loses his seat it will be a massive blow to McCarthy since Graves acts as his fixer in the House. Letlow is a new member with no clout so the new seat is probably going to be a northeast district, something like this:
Or this, both of which preserve Graves’ seat, create a second Black-majority district and leave Letlow as the loser in the Louisiana musical chairs. But that isn't certain; just a guess based on maps in Democratic proposals to the legislature a year or so ago.
Tierney Sneed wrote that when the Supreme Court put their hold on the case just before the midterms, “a merits panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals was preparing for an expedited review of a judge’s ruling that said that the 5-1 congressional plan likely violated the Voting Rights Act. The judge, US District Judge Shelly Dick, had been considering a remedial congressional plan, after lawmakers in Louisiana refused to pass a plan with a second majority-Black district themselves. The justices said Monday that their latest move ‘will allow the matter to proceed before the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for review in the ordinary course and in advance of the 2024 congressional elections in Louisiana.’ Louisiana state officials were sued last year for a congressional map— passed by the Republican legislature over Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ veto— that made only one of its six districts majority Black, despite the 2020 census showing that the state’s population is 33% Black.”
At the time, Dick wrote that “the evidence of Louisiana’s long and ongoing history of voting-related discrimination weighs heavily in favor of” the arguments put forward by the Louisiana State conference of the NAACP and the other challengers that brought the case.
The case, known as Robinson v. Ardoin, then went to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, a very conservative appeals court, and a three-judge appellate panel-- which included two circuit judges that were Republican appointees-- declined to put Dick’s order on hold. The appeals court expedited a fuller review of the case, but those proceedings were frozen last summer once the Louisiana officials successfully sought intervention from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in late June of last year, took up the case but put it on pause while it decided the challenge to the Alabama map.
In filings after the Alabama ruling was handed down, lawyers for the Louisiana Republican state officials argued that the Louisiana dispute presented a “unique situation” that would allow the high court to resolve legal questions about the Voting Rights Act that they claimed were left open by the Alabama ruling, known as Milligan.
“Today’s decision in Milligan does not address the district court’s significant errors of law that should rightly result in reversal,” the Louisiana filing said.
The state’s opponents countered that the district court in the Louisiana case had decided that the 5-1 map likely violated the Voting Rights Act under the same exact legal test the Supreme Court sanctioned in its Alabama ruling.
“Plaintiffs in both Milligan and Robinson presented the kind of evidence this Court has long required and has now reaffirmed in Milligan as sufficient to prove a (Voting Rights Act Section 2) violation,” the filing from the map’s challengers said.