Equality mandates equity

The essence of a Republic is the protection of the rights of the minority. While the majority “will“ governs policy, a constitutional order mandates that all races have a voice. Especially when history has not only ignored those voices, but suppressed them. The idea that in a republic, equality mandates a certain degree of equity in political representation – especially judicial representation – is a concept that Attorney General Jeff Landry seems not to grasp.

In the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last Tuesday (January 7), representatives of the AG sought to overturn the judicial mandate to create a minority judgeship in Terrebonne Parish for much the same reasons as their boss has opposed drawing another minority seat on the seven member state Supreme Court (which would more accurately reflect the third of Pelican State voters who are Black).

In the case of Terrebonne, the local NAACP has contended that the African-American electorate – constituting just under 20 percent of the parish’s population – has been denied adequate representation on the local court bench. No Black contender has ever emerged victorious in a contested election for one of the at-large judgeships in Terrebonne Parish. The parish’s first and only African-American judge, Juan Pickett, stood unopposed when he was elected in 2014, NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers noted in legal filings.

In 2017, U.S. District Judge James Brady, agreed with the NAACP after an eight-day trial in Baton Rouge, ruling that parishwide elections for judgeships violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of African-American residents, whose candidates Caucasian voters in the parish routinely defeated. Following his unexpected death, Brady’s successor U.S. District Judge Shelly D. Dick redrew the electoral lines for Terrebonne Parish judgeships, after local lawmakers – who have opposed splitting up the parish’s courts into individual electoral districts – shot down proposals for two straight years of legislative sessions.

The Voting Rights Act mandates the creation of a minority district when the minority group possesses size enough to make up a majority in a voting district; when the group would vote as a bloc, that tends to coalesce behind certain candidates; and when Caucasian residents typically also vote as a bloc to defeat those candidates. Orleans Parish, for example, also elects its judges at-large, yet in contrast, judicial docket is pretty evenly racially balanced. (Some might argue that the lack of Republican judges shows a partisan unbalance; nevertheless, racial identity, not ideology constitutes the biological distinction under federal law.)

Attorney General Landry has backed Terrebonne Parish President Gordy Dove over the NAACP.

“It makes absolutely no sense to have five subdistricts,” Dove told the Houma Courier two weeks ago. “If you go to court, a judge will hear your case no matter which district you live in. Don’t you think that case should be heard by someone elected by everyone in the parish, not just in one district?”

Angelique Duhon Freel, a deputy attorney general in Landry’s office, told the three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that accepting Dick’s plan would violate a long-held legal principle that favors having judges represent all – not just some – of the people who appear before them. Freel criticized the meandering shape of the proposed minority judgeship district – weaving between the towns Houma, Schriever, and Gray to gather in African-American neighborhoods – contending that Black residents would populate less than half of that seat.

However, Leah Aden, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, countered that Terrebonne Parish was a clear-cut example of the kind of dilution of minority political power that the Voting Rights Act was designed to address. Decades of elections have shown a “stark pattern of racially polarized voting in Terrebonne Parish,” Aden contended, with the parish’s Caucasian majority consistently voting down candidates backed by most of the local African-American electorate. Moreover, Aden pointed out that Louisiana has chosen split courts – including the State Supreme and Appeals courts, as well as 11 of the state’s 41 district courts – into separate, single-member electoral districts.

With a few very limited exceptions, Pelican State history has proven the majority population will generally opt against minority candidates. Therefore, the Republic’s mandate for equitable representation requires districts to reflect ethnic balance, as the federal VRA specifies. This is not gerrymandering! Again, partisan identification is not counted in the creation of such seats, and there is no guarantee in history that one racial group – even African Americans – will pledge their votes to one party over another over the long-term.

We urge Attorney General Jeff Landry to follow the example of Governor John Bel Edwards, and allow the District Court solution to stand. It would be nice if the AG stood up for the Voting Rights Act, and not to court rightwing voters upon whom he’s counting to carry him into the Governor’s office in just under four years.

Landry took an oath to the Constitution, “and the republic for which it stands,” after all.

This article originally published in the January 13, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.