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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Black voters won a big victory in Louisiana. Some White voters said it | |
violated their ‘personal dignity’ | |
By Tierney Sneed and Fredreka Schouten, CNN | |
Updated: | |
5:09 PM EDT, Mon May 6, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
Nearly two years after a federal judge said that Louisiana’s | |
congressional map diluted Black voting power, Black voters are at risk | |
of voting for a second time in an election under a plan that likely | |
violates the Voting Rights Act. | |
In response to the judge’s ruling, the state’s Republican | |
legislature had created a second majority-African American district in | |
the state’s six district congressional plan. But now, a different | |
federal court has said that adding the second majority-Black district | |
is unconstitutional. | |
The new ruling, issued Tuesday by two judges appointed by former | |
President Donald Trump, leaves the state without a congressional map | |
six months before the election and has fueled complaints of political | |
gamesmanship from critics on the left who fret that the clash could | |
provide another opening for opponents of the nation’s premier civil | |
rights law to attack one of its remaining pillars. | |
The legal fight may influence which party controls the US House next | |
year as the second majority-Black district would likely vote for a | |
Democrat. | |
Some Louisiana officials, meanwhile, contend that the ongoing legal | |
fight over the congressional map has put them in a tough spot – | |
caught between the Voting Rights Act’s demands for empowering | |
minority voters and the Constitution’s limits on the government’s | |
ability to consider race at all. | |
They say the Supreme Court must clear up what they contend is an | |
ambiguous legal landscape - despite the justices reaffirming their | |
position only last year in an in Alabama. | |
The Louisiana federal court that struck down the most recent | |
congressional map held a hearing Monday on next steps. The court | |
ordered briefs to be filed by close of business Tuesday that address | |
whether it is feasible for the legislature to draw a new map in time | |
for November’s elections. State officials have said they need to know | |
the contours of the district by May 15. | |
In a statement posted on social media, Louisiana Attorney General Liz | |
Murrill said the state should be allowed to implement the map passed by | |
the state legislature that allows for two Black-majority districts – | |
or failing that, revert to the map used in the 2022 election with a | |
single district in which African American voters are in the majority. | |
She said the dispute appears headed to the Supreme Court this week. The | |
Black voters who are defending the second majority-Black district have | |
also signaled they will likely seek an emergency intervention from the | |
Supreme Court. | |
The current turmoil reflects a larger pattern of courts striking down | |
redistricting plans as discriminating against voters of color, only for | |
those plans to remain in place for elections because of procedural | |
delays and other litigative gambits. How the high court handles the | |
dispute will signal the degree with which the justices will tolerate | |
legal maneuvers that prolong the resolution of redistricting disputes | |
that crop every decade after the census. | |
“Right now, Louisiana has no map,” said state Sen. Cleo Fields, a | |
Black Democrat and former member of Congress, who is one of the | |
candidates running in the new 6th Congressional District created by the | |
state legislature. | |
“The courts can’t say, ‘Comply with the law. You have the right | |
to draw the lines,’ but then say, ‘We don’t like the way you | |
complied with the law,’” he said. | |
Although Black residents make up roughly a third of Louisiana’s | |
population, the state has just one Black lawmaker – who is also the | |
lone Democrat – in its six-member US House delegation. | |
Claims of ‘affirmative action in redistricting’ | |
In the current phase of the dispute, a three-judge trial judge panel | |
sided with a group of 12 self-described “non-African American” | |
voters who alleged that their “personal dignity” had been injured | |
because the new map with two Black-majority districts “racially | |
stigmatizes,” “racially stereotypes” and “racially maligns” | |
them. | |
Their lawsuit said that the congressional plan amounted “to the | |
application of affirmative action in redistricting, unseen in previous | |
racial gerrymandering” cases and violated the Constitution’s equal | |
protection clause. | |
Last week, the two Trump-appointed judges in the majority rejected | |
arguments from the state that the lawmakers had other reasons besides | |
race for drawing the plan the way they did. The state had pointed to | |
the desires by state lawmakers to protect certain congressional | |
incumbents. | |
The new district slashes diagonally from Shreveport in the northwest of | |
the state to Baton Rouge in the southeast for some 250 miles to create | |
a district where Black residents make up some 54% of the district’s | |
voters – up from about 24% under the old lines. The court majority | |
knocked the redistricting plan both for its shape and how it divided | |
cities and parishes “along racial lines.” | |
The majority – US District Judges Robert Summerhays and David Joseph | |
– said that even if the lawmakers had an obligation to comply with | |
the Voting Rights Act, that requirement did not override the mandate | |
that they adhere to traditional redistricting principles, like | |
geographical compactness and reasonable configurations. | |
In a dissent, Bill Clinton-appointed Circuit Judge Carl Stewart said | |
that the court should have let the most recent map stand. Stewart, who | |
is Black, noted that “none of the plaintiffs in this case | |
demonstrated that (the map) had a discriminatory effect on them based | |
on their race,” nor did they share their racial identities with the | |
court hearing the case. | |
A lawyer for the challengers, Paul Hurd, told CNN that the harm the map | |
was doing to his clients was that of “racial stigmatization.” | |
Hurd declined to comment when asked about the racial identities of his | |
clients, but the list includes prominent White Republicans in the | |
state. | |
Louisiana lawmakers drew the contested plan this year in order to | |
resolve a lawsuit brought by Black voters that challenged the state’s | |
initial congressional plan after the 2020 census – a map with only | |
one majority Black district – as a violation of the Voting Rights | |
Act. | |
“Our case is a really good example of a situation where you’re | |
damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t,” in Baton Rouge | |
after Tuesday’s ruling. | |
She has said she will be asking the court to allow her to implement the | |
map drawn by the legislature in the coming election, as she also | |
appeals the ruling to the Supreme Court. | |
“The jurisprudence and litigation involving redistricting has made it | |
impossible to not have federal judges drawing maps,” Murrill said. | |
“It’s not right and they need to fix it.” | |
Hurd – who has spearheaded successfully racial gerrymandering cases | |
in the past – doesn’t believe there is a lack of clarity that the | |
Supreme Court must address. | |
“The law is not that unsettled,” he said. | |
State lawmakers say map was designed to keep most incumbents safe | |
Supporters of the map argue that political decisions – not just race | |
– shaped the actions of state lawmakers and Louisiana’s recently | |
elected Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who backed the new lines. | |
During a special session to craft congressional map in January, | |
legislators said they aimed to protect their incumbents, including the | |
two most powerful Republicans in the US House of Representatives: | |
Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise. | |
Lawmakers said they also sought to preserve a seat held by GOP Rep. | |
Julia Letlow, the only woman in the state’s congressional delegation. | |
The map lawmakers approved carved up the district of one Republican, | |
Rep. Garret Graves, who had endorsed Landry’s opponent in the 2023 | |
gubernatorial primary. | |
Not surprisingly, he welcomed the latest ruling. “The court’s | |
ruling speaks for itself,” Graves said. “It’s the most powerful | |
statement.” | |
Republicans involved in national redistricting issues scoff at the idea | |
that the lawmakers’ push to protect incumbents – and punish Graves | |
– somehow proves that politics drove their actions. | |
“All this talk of politics and everything else in this Louisiana case | |
is secondary to the reason they had a special session,” Adam Kincaid, | |
president of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, told CNN. | |
“The reason they had a special session wasn’t to get rid of Garret | |
Graves. The reason they had a special session was to draw a second | |
Black majority district because they didn’t want (the) judge … to | |
draw it for them.” | |
Allegations of ‘gamesmanship’ and running down the clock | |
Regardless of whether the Supreme Court decides to take up the case, | |
the ongoing court fight shows how “gamesmanship” can undermine the | |
Voting Rights Act protections, said Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School | |
professor specializing in elections and constitutional law. | |
“You don’t need to strike (the law) down for it not to work,” | |
said Levitt, who also did stints in the Obama and Biden | |
administrations. | |
The Black voters who initially sued the state over its 5-1 map secured | |
a ruling in their favor in June 2022. US District Judge Shelly Dick – | |
a Barack Obama appointee who is the chief judge of the district court | |
for the Middle District of Louisiana, in Baton Rouge – issued a | |
preliminary order finding that the state likely violated the VRA by | |
drawing only one Black majority district. | |
She gave the legislature a chance to redraw the maps by June 15 of that | |
year. The 5th Circuit denied the state’s efforts to pause her ruling, | |
but at Louisiana’s request, the Supreme Court ultimately intervened. | |
The high court took the dispute up but said it would be putting the | |
litigation on hold while it considered an Alabama redistricting case | |
teeing up similar legal questions. The 2022 congressional elections in | |
Louisiana took place under the 5-1 map. | |
Once the justices handed down their Alabama ruling last year – which | |
upheld its previous precedents for applying the Voting Rights Act to | |
redistricting cases – the Louisiana case went back down to the 5th | |
Circuit. Rather than letting Judge Dick move forward with her previous | |
preliminary order, the appeals court wiped it away and said that the | |
state should be given more time to redraw its map, prompting the | |
special session in January where the latest map was adopted. | |
But when the non-Black voters challenged the new map, they went to a | |
different federal court – the district court of Louisiana’s Western | |
District. The court allowed the Black voters who sued over the original | |
map to play only a limited role in the proceedings and denied their | |
request to insert into the record the original Baton Rouge proceedings. | |
Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic | |
Redistricting Committee, said the latest challenge to the map was a | |
clear “example of forum-shopping” by the voters challenging the | |
map. A nonprofit arm of Jenkins’ group helped fund the initial | |
litigation decided by Dick. | |
Within days of the legislature approving the second-Black majority | |
district, “you get these non-Black voters immediately running to a | |
super-conservative court in the Western District of Louisiana because | |
they didn’t like the decision in a Baton Rouge-based court,” she | |
said. | |
Some of Louisiana’s critics have questioned why the legislature, when | |
it met in the special session this year to redraw the map, rejected | |
other proposals that would have drawn the new districts in a more | |
compact way to comply with traditional redistricting principles. | |
“Plenty of maps that were suggested had a little bit of disruption to | |
the incumbent-protection scheme, but sometimes complying with the law | |
means you don’t get everything you want,” Levitt said. | |
Fields – the former Democratic congressman who had proposed a | |
different map in an earlier round of the redistricting fight than the | |
one ultimately approved by lawmakers – said the state needs | |
resolution. | |
“Was this the map that was my preference? No,” he said. “But | |
it’s the desire and will of the legislature.” | |
And the longer the current impasse lasts means more delay and | |
uncertainty for candidates – and Black Louisianians, he contended. | |
“At the end of the day, Black people should have the opportunity to | |
elect the candidate of their choice to the US Congress,” he said. | |
This story has been updated with additional developments. | |
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