ACLU of Louisiana demands fair redistricting

By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer

The ACLU of Louisiana launched its Fair Maps for Louisiana campaign demanding fair maps from legislators as Louisiana prepares its once-in-a-decade process of redistricting.

“This year, the ACLU of Louisiana will be demanding a transparent and fair redistricting process that ensures all voters are fairly represented, regardless of their race or for whom they vote,” said Chris Kaiser, ACLU of Louisiana advocacy director in a press release. “In a democracy, voters should choose their representatives and every vote should count equally. But the truth is, the people of Louisiana have often been left out of the redistricting process, and too often, politicians have abused the map-drawing process to manipulate the outcome of elections. But this year can be different, and now is the time to hold our representatives accountable. We must ensure that fair representation for the people of our state is not sacrificed to partisan calculation and self-interest.”

The ACLU of Louisiana partnered with the NAACP of Louisiana, as well as 13 other organizations, in writing a letter on redistricting to Louisiana’s House and Governmental Affairs Committee and Louisiana’s Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee on October 18.

The letter’s authors called for the creation of a second majority-minority district, which is a district where racial or ethnic minorities make up a majority of the district’s constituents.

“It is fair, necessary, and logical that Black Louisianans – who comprise nearly one-third of Louisiana’s residents, according to 2020 Census data – have an opportunity to elect their preferred congressional representatives,” the letter stated.

Despite Black people making up nearly one-third (1/3) of the Louisiana population, only a single one of the state’s members of the U.S. House of Represent-atives is Black (Troy Carter). Carter’s district runs from New Orleans all the way to Baton Rouge. None of the majority white districts have ever elected a Black congressperson. The state has had only four Black congresspeople since Reconstruction.

In a September 21 article in The Atlantic, Carter voiced his support for a second majority-minority district even though it would reduce the number of Black voters in his own district and thus potentially hurt his future re-election campaigns.

“If Baton Rouge and Opelousas can be tied in for a second majority-minority district, I’m all in. The process isn’t about me. Sometimes you give up some of your own to help someone else,” Carter said in The Atlantic.

The letter also reminded the state legislature of its obligation to comply with the Voting Rights Act while redistricting. The writers cited Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, whose main purpose is to prevent minority vote dilution at all levels of government. Packing Black voters into districts where they constitute an unnecessarily large majority would be an example of minority vote dilution. Section 2 prohibits this dilution regardless of whether or not it began with a discriminatory purpose.

The Supreme Court case Thornburg v. Gingles set forth three conditions indicating a districting plan had resulted in vote dilution. The first was whether an alternative districting plan could be drawn with one or more single-member districts in which the minority community was large and geographically compact enough to constitute a minority. The second was the minority group being politically cohesive in its support for its preferred candidates. The third was if candidates preferred by the minority groups would usually be defeated due to the political cohesion of non-minority voters supporting different candidates in those districts. The letter’s authors believe all three conditions are met in Louisiana.

“We urge the state to fully consider and adopt a congressional map that ensures non-dilution of Black voting strength in Louisiana. Failure to do so may lead to costly litigation,” the letter stated.

Requests to Representative Garrett Graves for comment were not returned as of press time.

This article originally published in the October 25, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.