Sen. Glen Womack’s proposal to establish a majority-Black district extending from Caddo Parish to East Baton Rouge Parish. (Screen capture from the bill)
Aug 01, 2024 Story by: Editor
Read the PDF of the complete statement here.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Black voters in Louisiana are urging the Supreme Court to review a case that will determine whether the state’s newly enacted congressional map, featuring two majority-Black districts, will remain effective beyond the 2024 elections. The appeal, known as Robinson v. Callais, follows the Court’s emergency stay in May, which halted a district court’s decision to overturn the map and allowed it to be used for the upcoming election cycle. The key issue is whether the map will be upheld for the rest of the decade until the next redistricting.
The current map was created in response to a previous lawsuit, Robinson v. Landry, where a federal court found that the 2022 map, which included only one majority-Black district, likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The same Black voters and civic groups who are now appealing to the Supreme Court were instrumental in that significant legal victory, which was upheld on appeal.
Stuart Naifeh, redistricting manager at the Legal Defense Fund, emphasized, “In January, the Louisiana Legislature finally did what it should have done in 2022: pass a fair map that reflects the diversity of the great state of Louisiana. It was wrong for the lower court to disrupt the state’s effort to do the right thing and throw the 2024 election into chaos. The Supreme Court set that right for this election cycle by allowing, and as our filing explains, federal law and the Constitution require that Louisiana maintain this new map until the next census.”
Ashley Shelton, president/CEO of Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, added, “This year, Black voters in Louisiana will have the chance to elect their candidates of choice for two congressional seats—the same should be true moving forward. The law, and basic principles of fairness, point in this direction. Black voters have mobilized since the beginning of the redistricting process in Louisiana. We will continue to mobilize to the polls and fight for fair maps until these cases are complete.”
Michael McClanahan, president of the NAACP Louisiana State Conference, stated, “There should be no question that Black voters deserve an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates in two congressional districts. We fought for that reality this year and we will continue to fight to make sure it remains our reality in the future.”
In response to a lawsuit by a group of voters labeled as “non-African American,” a divided panel of three federal judges in Callais v. Landry overturned the current map, calling it a racial gerrymander that violated the U.S. Constitution. The majority opinion claimed that legislators had improperly prioritized race and that the map did not sufficiently comply with the VRA, despite other court rulings affirming the need for two majority-Black districts. This decision challenges longstanding precedents balancing the Constitution and the VRA.
While the Supreme Court has temporarily stayed the lower court’s decision through the November elections, today’s filing asks the Court to take up the case and resolve the appeal’s merits.
Nora Ahmed, ACLU of Louisiana legal director, said, “Black voters in Louisiana have equitable representation in Congress for the upcoming election, and that should not change. The legislature has complied with the Voting Rights Act in passing a fair congressional map. We look forward to a swift reversal of the decision that found the map constituted an unlawful racial gerrymander.”
Sarah Brannon, deputy director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, stated, “We’re asking the Supreme Court to summarily reverse the earlier misguided decision from a divided three-judge federal court panel. We continue to fight for the fundamental rights of Black Louisianians, whose voting power has been severely diluted.”
Alora Thomas, senior counsel at the Harvard Election Law Clinic, affirmed, “We continue to fight until the voters of Louisiana get the map that they deserve.” Source: LDF
