Landry continues the fight to end the historic Chisom Consent Decree
5th February 2024 · 0 Comments
The never-ending battle for fair representation on State Supreme Court continues.
With all the hoopla around scrubbing Black history from classrooms, libraries and education venues, Black History Month 2024 is fraught with the reality that the same people trying to eradicate American history are the ones leading the battle to suppress voting rights and a seat at the table for Blacks in Congress and on court benches.
The whole congressional redistricting fight is as much about who controls the seats and the effort to continue white supremacy, even if it has a Black face, as the never-ending battle over Black representation on the Louisiana Supreme Court (LSC) that has been going on since Blacks were purposely disenfranchised from that body for 270 years until the Chisom Consent Decree was created in 1991 following a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
As Black History Month gets underway, Black Louisianans are seeing efforts, in real-time, the continuation of the battle to take away our right to representation on the state’s highest court.
So, this is the right moment and time to displace Louisiana’s history relative to voting rights and fair representation.
Republican Governor Jeff Landry hasn’t held office an entire month, but that hasn’t stopped his campaign against fair representation on the Louisiana State Supreme Court that he started during his stint as Louisiana’s attorney general.
On December 2, 202l, Landry filed a motion in federal district court to dissolve the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic Chisom Voting Consent Decree. Since his filing, federal Judge Susie Morgan and a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals have told him no. Both courts found Landry’s claims to have no merit and that Landry could not guarantee, as mandated by law, that any redistricting of the LSC would not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Undeterred, Landry requested and was granted a review of his motion to dissolve the Consent. Judgement by the full (en banc) Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The legal fight started in 1986 when Ron Chisom, a community activist and civil rights leader, joined forces with a multicultural, multigenerational team of lawyers and community members in a lawsuit, Chisom v Roemer.
The lawsuit ended in the U.S. Supreme Court’s mandate that the lower federal district court make a settlement with the plaintiffs (consent decree) that paved the way for the appointment of an African American to a seat on the Louisiana Supreme Court (LSC).
Associate Justice Revius O. Ortique became the first African American to sit on the LSC in a temporary 8th seat in 1991 due to the Chisom Consent Decree. The decree was codified in the state Legislature with a law that echoed the settlement and secured the tenure rights to the person elected to a new 7th District seat upon the retirement of one of the two judges (white males) who represented the 1st District.
Before the Chisom Consent Decree, Black Orleans Parish was thrown into the 1st District with predominantly white Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. That apportionment was the mother of all gerrymandered districts. The way the state legislature configured the First District was a textbook case for pure Black voter dilution.
Landry’s effort to undo fair representation on the LSC by dissolving the Chisom Consent Decree is a continuation of the same fight that ensued in Chisom v Jindal in 2012, which ended in retired Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Bernette J. Johnson ascending to the highest seat on the bench.
Johnson had been elected to serve on the LSC in 1992 and had to sue her fellow justices to recognize her tenure on the court in 2012 when Catherine D. (Kitty) Kimball was planning to retire.
Ironically, Kimball, the first woman on the LSC bench, bent backward to assist others to leapfrog over Johnson, the first African-American woman on the court and, if successful, the first Black Chief Justice on the LSC.
Despite the legal wrangling and thanks to members of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, including former Mayor Marc H. Morial, Sherman Copelin, and others who sponsored bills that became law and codified tenure of occupants of the so-called “Chisom seat,” Johnson won her lawsuit and presided over the LSC, its budget, hiring practices, and leadership for seven years until her retirement in 2020.
Johnson is credited for standing up for justice and penning powerful dissents when she disagreed with her fellow judges.
Johnson is not credited for removing a statue from the front of the LSC on Royal Street during her tenure, commemorating U.S. Supreme Court Justice Edward Douglass White Jr., a Louisianan and ninth U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
White was a former Confederate and confessed KKK member. He also took part in the Battle of the Liberty Monument.
White sided with the majority in the Plessy v Ferguson case, which upheld the legality of state segregation. Johnson does not claim to have spearheaded the removal of White’s statue, which was placed inside the LSC; those who marched, picketed, and called for its removal are happy not to see it in front of the state’s highest court.
Today, Associate Justice Piper Griffin holds the 7th District seat. She is the only African American and only woman on the court.
Now, let’s digress and look back on white Louisianans’ historic effort to disenfranchise Black people:
Louisiana’s Constitution – 1898
“The call for a new convention began in 1896, soon after the General Assembly convened. Planners structured the referendum and election for delegates simultaneously and in such a way as to exclude the ‘wrong’ voters. White registration fell from 164,000 to 74,000, and Black registration fell from 130,000 to 13,000.
The convention began on February 8, 1898, at Tulane Hall (formerly the Mechanic’s Institute). Its primary purpose was to place the Democratic Party in firm state control. The delegates spent half their time deciding how to disenfranchise black voters. The rest of the time was spent writing the longest constitution to date. The convention ended on May 12, 1898.”
The above description of the 1898 Louisiana Constitutional Convention posted on the Louisiana Supreme Court Library website is sharp and concise. Yes, the entire convention centered around how to disenfranchise Black voters legally.
But that description left out the passion and heartfelt determination stated before the assembly by New Orleans Attorney E.B. Krutschnitt, who was selected to preside over the convention.
“We know that this convention has been called together by the people of the State to eliminate from the electorate the mass of corrupt and illiterate voters who have during the last quarter of the century degraded our politics,” Kruttschnitt said.
The 1898 Constitutional Convention was called to order by his Honor Francis T. Nicholls, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana, in Tulane Hall, University Place (the former Mechanics Hall where a massacre took place before the 1866 Constitutional Convention began. A white police mob attacked Blacks conventioneers resulting in several deaths). Mechanics Hall was demolished, and the Roosevelt Hotel stands today.
Fast forward to 2024, undeterred by the Fifth Circuit’s denial of his request to kill the Chisom Consent Decree, Landry requested and was granted a review of his motion by the full (en banc) Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The exact day of the hearing has yet to be announced, but a source says it will take place the week of May 13.
What does Landry have to gain by dissolving the Consent Decree? Theoretically, the LSC can be redistricted to give Landry the power to support and pick people of his choosing to run.
After all, why would Landry want people, especially Black people, not of his choosing, to have the power over the court’s checkbook, the clout to write dissenting opinions, or any control of the courts?
Landry is, again, as he has done in the past, trying to limit civil rights and bring back Jim Crow.
Landry convinced the U.S. Supreme Court not to make the remedy retroactive so that people incarcerated by non-unanimous jury decisions could not get a retrial if they were convicted by a non-unanimous jury before 2018.
It was Landry who fought against ex-felons getting the right to vote, and even when the constitutional amendment was passed, giving them the vote, they had to be paroled or pardoned for five years first before getting their right to vote back.
Ironically, Landry is also pushing, along with five LSC justices, to create a second majority-minority district on the state’s high court.
There is no dispute that the LSC is gerrymandered to give an unfair advantage to white candidates. And more fair districts are needed to allow Blacks statewide to elect candidates of their choice. But Landry leading the charge can only mean that the lines will be drawn to favor candidates (Black or not) of his choice.
In a striking December 2023 letter to then-Attorney General Landry and other officials, LSC Chief Justice John Weimer said he’s in favor of creating a second Black-majority district but opposes redistricting maps allegedly drawn by the NAACP. In the six-page letter provided by the Louisiana Illuminator, Weimer hints at districts being drawn specifically to protect specific individuals up for reelection and for others who are favored by those drafting the maps.
“Districts drawn for political, partisan, or self-serving reasons should be rejected in favor of districts that are apolitical, nonpartisan, and designed to serve the public best,” Weimer wrote.
Weimer’s letter is both laughable and the height of hypocrisy. From the Louisiana Supreme Court, state district courts, Louisiana Legislature, the Louisiana Congressional Delegation, and U.S. Senate seats, state maps governing elections are gerrymandered to dilute the Black vote.
What is more ironic is that Jeff Landry is a Cajun, born in St. Martinville, Louisiana, with a population of 5,302 as of 2022, with a 54.6 percent Black population.
How Landry came from a tiny, predominantly Black town and purports to solve crime in New Orleans, with a population of more than 300,000 people, and predominately Black (57 percent), is mind-boggling. Now, he wants to control all levers of government, the courts, and elections.
The fact that he has aligned himself with some prominent Black elected officials means nothing to Black political observers who know the game. This is about one hand washing the other and control, and less about justice and fairness.
This article originally published in the February 5, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
