Jan 15, 2025 Story by: Editor
Louisiana officials urged the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday to overturn a lower court’s decision that declared the state’s congressional map unconstitutional for diluting Black voting power, requiring it to be redrawn.
In 2022, the Louisiana Legislature approved a congressional map with just one majority-Black district. Black voters and civil rights groups filed a lawsuit, claiming the map violated the Voting Rights Act by diminishing Black electoral influence. According to the 2020 census, Black residents constitute roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population.
U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, appointed by Barack Obama, sided with the plaintiffs in February 2024 and ordered the state to revise its map to ensure fairer racial representation.
However, attorneys representing state officials argued before a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit that Judge Dick misinterpreted the evidence. They also contended that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge districts where they do not reside. The officials claimed Dick’s ruling should have been limited to the districts in question rather than mandating a complete overhaul of the map.
The plaintiffs countered, asserting that Judge Dick’s findings were accurate and that the current map constitutes unlawful racial gerrymandering.
Megan Keenan, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, highlighted the trial testimony of plaintiff Steven Harris, a pastor from the predominantly Black city of Natchitoches. Harris testified that his community’s pleas for infrastructure repairs were ignored for years. However, in 2011, after being incorporated into a majority-Black district, their concerns began to be addressed.
“Pastor Harris was in tears when he recounted this at trial,” Keenan said. “He testified that his community began to believe again that the political process could work and it could work for them, too. And then in 2022, under the plan we’re currently challenging, the Legislature dismantled that majority Black district. That is the type of dilution that violates the Voting Rights Act.”
The panel hearing the case, Nairne v. Landry, includes U.S. Circuit Judge James Dennis, a Bill Clinton appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Catharina Haynes, appointed by George W. Bush, and U.S. Circuit Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, a Joe Biden appointee.
Meanwhile, a separate case before the Supreme Court is challenging a revised congressional map drawn by the Louisiana Legislature in January 2024, following a Fifth Circuit order in the Nairne case. That map added a second majority-Black district but faces criticism from a group of self-identified “non-African American” voters who claim it prioritizes race unconstitutionally.
In April 2024, a three-judge district panel ruled 2-1 that the updated map was unconstitutional. However, the Supreme Court stayed the decision, allowing the map to be used in the November 2024 election. A final Supreme Court ruling on the matter is anticipated by the summer of 2025. Source: CourtHouse News Service
