WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide a thorny legal dispute from Louisiana involving the state’s effort to draw a congressional district map while navigating claims it is unlawfully considering race.
The case has no immediate impact on this year’s elections in the state, which is using a map that includes two majority black districts out of six.
During the course of drawing a map based on 2020 census data, the Republican-led state has been sued from two directions.
One lawsuit claimed that the state had to draw a map containing two majority Black districts to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act. But once that case was resolved with a victory for the civil rights plaintiffs, the state’s new map that was drawn to comply with that finding was challenged by a group of “non-African American” voters who said it violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment by discriminating against them.
A federal court struck the new map down, but with time running out to finalize the congressional districts before this year’s elections, state officials successfully asked the Supreme Court to put the lower court decision on hold in May.
In the latest case, the state’s Republican leadership has unlikely allies in the form of the civil rights plaintiffs who originally sued to ensure a second majority Black district.
Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga wrote in court papers that the state is “stuck in an endless game of ping-pong” that needs to be resolved. If not, “the state will be sued again no matter what it does,” he added.
The state argues in part that it should have leeway to draw districts on partisan grounds to protect incumbents, which include House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican.
If left uncorrected, the panel’s decision will further inject the federal courts into the redistricting process and deprive states of the necessary flexibility to take account of other legislative priorities when they act to remedy identified violations.
The Legal Defense Fund, a civil rights legal group that challenged the original map, backs the state, with lawyers writing in a separate filing that the lower court ruling, if left in place, “will further inject the federal courts into the redistricting process and deprive states of the necessary flexibility to take account of other legislative priorities when they act to remedy identified violations.”
Lawyers for Phillip Callais and 11 other plaintiffs said in their filing that the state “should be ashamed” for using race to draw district lines in a way that “over-represents Black voters” and could lead to Republicans losing their majority in the House of Representatives.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority that, in a surprising move, buttressed the federal Voting Rights Act in 2023 in another racial gerrymandering case involving the congressional map in Alabama.
The court will hear oral arguments and issue a ruling in the Louisiana case during its current term, which ends in June.
