CNN
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The Supreme Court punted on Friday in a major legal challenge to Louisiana’s long-litigated congressional map, taking the unusual step of holding the case over for a second term.
The decision means the sprawling district that added a second Black and Democratic lawmaker to the state’s overwhelmingly Republican delegation will remain in place, at least for the time being. The court said it will hear another set of arguments about the questions raised in the case in the term that begins this fall.
Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative, dissented from the decision to hold the appeal over until next term.
Louisiana filed the appeal, arguing that it was caught in an impossible position: At first, a federal court ruled that the state had likely violated the Voting Rights Act by drawing only one majority Black district out of six.
When the state sought to comply with that decision by drawing a second majority Black district, a group of self-described “non-Black voters” sued, alleging the state violated the Constitution by relying too much on race to meet the first court’s demands.
“Congress requires this court to exercise jurisdiction over constitutional challenges to congressional redistricting, and we accordingly have an obligation to resolve such challenges promptly,” Thomas wrote in his dissent.
Thomas wrote that he would have held that the provision of the Voting Rights Act at issue in the case is unconstitutional.
The Voting Rights Act requires that states not dilute the power of minority voters during the once-a-decade redistricting process, such as by “packing” those voters into one district or “cracking” neighborhoods of color up into many districts to spread out their influence. The law was enacted in response to decades of post-Civil War efforts – particularly in the South – to limit the political power of African Americans.
And yet the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause demands that a state not draw a map predominantly based on race. If it does, it must demonstrate that it had a compelling reason to do so and carried out the effort in the narrowest way possible.
Because of that inherent tension between the Voting Rights Act and the equal protection clause, the Supreme Court has tended to give states some “breathing room” in drawing their maps. One of the central questions in the case, Louisiana v. Callais, was exactly how much room state lawmakers should have.
The high court’s conservative majority has grown increasingly skeptical of policies of any kind that, in the court’s words, pick “winners and losers” based on race. In the most notable example, a six-justice majority ended affirmative action in college admissions in 2023 – a decision the Trump administration has used to justify attempts to curb diversity, equity and inclusion programs in both the government and private sector.
The Supreme Court has also in recent years chipped away at the power of the Voting Rights Act, including with a 2013 decision that ended the practice of requiring states with a history of racist policies to preclear changes to their voting rights laws with the Justice Department.
But in a surprise decision a decade later, the high court went in the other direction, bolstering a key provision of the law by ordering Alabama to redraw its map to allow for an additional Black-majority district. Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, penned the opinion for a 5-4 majority, siding with the court’s three liberals. Another conservative, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, agreed with the key parts of the decision.
Part of what was at issue in the Louisiana case is whether race “predominated” the redistricting process. The plaintiffs said Louisiana lawmakers were entirely focused on race in the redrawing. State officials have said that, while they were responding to the first court’s order about a second Black district, they also were focused mainly on politics – specifically a desire to draw the boundaries in a way that would retain incumbents, including House Speaker Mike Johnson.
The Louisiana district the state drew slashes diagonally for some 250 miles from Shreveport in the northwest of the state to Baton Rouge in the southeast to create a district where Black residents make up some 54% of voters – up from about 24% under the old lines. During oral arguments in March, Roberts described it as a “snake that runs from one end of the state to the other.”
Rep. Cleo Fields, a Democrat, won the seat in last year’s election – adding a second Democrat to the state’s delegation.
The Biden administration submitted a brief to the Supreme Court that technically supported neither party but urged the justices to reverse a special three-judge district court that would throw out the current map. Days after taking office, the Trump administration submitted a letter declaring that it had “reconsidered the government’s position” and that the earlier brief “no longer represents the position of the United States.”
