House Democrats set up ‘strong argument’ for redistricting lawsuit, lawmaker says
21st February 2022 · 0 Comments
By Julie O’Donoghue
Contributing Writer
(lailluminator.com) — Rep. Cedric Glover, a Black Democrat from Shreveport, has tried and failed six times in the past week to add another majority-Black seat to the Louisiana House of Representatives map that will go into place for the 2023 election cycle and be used for the next decade.
Glover offered three failed amendments on the House floor earlier this week that would have converted a majority-white district into a majority-Black district in the Republican legislative leadership’s House map proposal. The House and Governmental Affairs Committee has also voted down three of Glover’s bills – one last week and two Wednesday – that would have created new House maps with an additional majority-Black district.
Glover’s six proposals have all been very similar. They rework Shreveport’s six House districts to create more racially diverse seats, including one additional majority-Black seat. None of them have come close to getting enough traction to advance from the Legislature. When Glover’s House amendments came to the floor Monday, they didn’t receive even a third of the House members’ support.
But Glover’s repeated attempts to pass a different version of the Louisiana House map may not be about gaining the Legislature’s approval, which was always going to be politically difficult. It could be a strategy for strengthening a legal argument against the map that wins final approval from lawmakers.
“Your bills present the strongest argument against the success of [the favored Republicans’ House map] in the courts,” Rep. Wilford Carter, a Black Democrat from Lake Charles, told Glover.
Civil rights organizations have threatened to sue if Louisiana’s new legislative and congressional political maps don’t increase the number of majority-minority districts.
The litigation seems likely, as the Legislature heads into the finals of its special session on redistricting Thursday. None of the maps that look likely to pass would boost the number of majority-minority districts.
Glover has not said publicly that he’s pushing his proposals repeatedly with an eye toward the civil rights organizations’ legal strategy. Carter, a retired judge, mentioned it more than once during the House and Governmental Affairs Committee meeting last Wednesday.
“I noticed on all the [Glover] amendments that all the white representatives was against it and all the Black representatives was for it,” Carter said to Glover. “Not passing your amendment put the question squarely to the courts: Are we going to allow racial decisions to determine the makeup of the House of Representatives of the state of Louisiana?”
Glover nodded along as Carter made his comments.
House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, R-Gonzales, and Rep. John Stefanski, R-Crowley, authored the Louisiana House map that is expected to get the Legislature’s full approval late this week. It includes 29 majority-Black districts out of 105 House seats, the same number as the current House map. The civil rights organizations say it runs afoul of the federal Voting Rights Act.
Black residents make up a third of Louisiana’s population, but 29 of 105 House seats only adds up to 27 percent of the entire chamber. If majority-Black districts made up a third of the House districts, they would account for 35 seats.
In his proposals, Glover has not tried to rework the entirety of the House map. He focused exclusively on Shreveport and only tried to add one additional majority-Black district statewide, His proposals would have brought the total majority-Black seats up to 30, short of what some civil rights organizations were pushing to implement.
Glover said he focused on Shreveport because it’s his hometown and the community about which he has the most expertise.
Shreveport’s House seats on the map authored by Schexnayder and Stefanski are too racially segregated, he said. All six seats are at least 67 percent Black residents or white residents, even though Shreveport – where Glover served as mayor for eight years – is more racially diverse, he said.
A decade ago, during the last redistricting session, legislative staff had also recommended the Louisiana House include one more majority-Black district.
In 2011, the Republican-controlled House passed a House map that included 29 majority-Black seats, though the longtime House Clerk Alfred “Butch” Speer had suggested the Legislature create 30.
Then-House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Algiers, said he had to hire an outside law firm to handle any potential redistricting challenges in the House in 2011, in part because Speer’s advice conflicted with what the Legislature eventually approved.
The federal government ended up clearing the map with 29 majority-Black seats and no litigation didn’t press the issue over whether another majority-Black district was necessary.
Civil rights organizations are much more engaged in political redistricting now than they were 10 years ago in Louisiana, and legal challenges based on the Voting Rights Act don’t have to rely on an alleged statewide deficit of majority-minority districts.
The U.S. Department of Justice has forced Louisiana to create majority-Black seats in specific regions of the state previously because it determined that Black residents in those communities needed more opportunities for selecting their representation, regardless of what was happening statewide.
Decades ago, the federal government asked Louisiana to create a majority-Black seat in Northeast Louisiana, which became District 21 currently held by Rep. C. Travis Johnson, D-Vidalia, and a majority-Black seat in the Amite area, which became District 72 currently held by Rep. Robby Carter, D-Amite, and formerly held by Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Those districts were created not necessarily because of a statewide deficit of majority-Black districts, but because it was perceived the local Black communities in those areas were not fairly getting to elect House representatives of their choice, according to legislative staff.
Civil rights organizations and Black Democrats in the House may hope that a court makes the same determination during this cycle about Shreveport – that Black residents in that city don’t have enough leverage over the selection of their House members.
“I think we are going to see you again in court. You’re going to be a witness,” Carter told Glover at the committee meeting Thursday.
“Thank you judge,” Glover responded.
Louisiana Illuminator (www.lailluminator.com) is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization.
This article originally published in the February 21, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
