La. GOP lawmakers still hope to win gerrymandering appeal despite SCOTUS ruling
20th June 2023 · 0 Comments
By Wesley Muller
Contributing Writer
(lailluminator.com) — Louisiana’s Republican lawmakers believe they can still win their appeal in a federal congressional district gerrymandering lawsuit similar to one the state of Alabama lost Thursday in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court dropped an opinion Thursday in Allen v. Milligan that upholds a lower federal court decision that found congressional district maps Alabama’s legislature approved in 2021 violated Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act. Many legal analysts and court watchers believe the ruling will affect maps in other states — such as Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida — where similar lawsuits are pending.
However, at a press conference earlier this month, following the close of Louisiana’s 2023 legislative session, House Speaker Clay Schexnayder and Senate President Page Cortez suggested they can win Louisiana’s case, Ardoin v. Robinson, if the Supreme Court sends it back to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
“The oral arguments were very different in the Alabama case than what would’ve applied to our case,” Cortez said.
The Supreme Court stayed Louisiana’s case, Ardoin v. Robinson, that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed on behalf of Black voters against Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin and other Louisiana officials last year, putting it on hold while justices considered the Alabama case. NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Jared Evans said he expects the case will be remanded back to the 5th Circuit, but he disagreed with Cortez’s belief that the two cases are very different.
“Unfortunately, the facts in Louisiana are just as bad, if not worse,” Evans said. “The situations are as close to identical as possible, and we expect the outcome to be just the same.”
At the core of the Alabama case are the state’s population demographics as recorded in the 2020 Census and the number of congressional districts determined by population. Alabama has seven congressional districts and a 31 percent minority population.
Simple math would dictate minority voters should comprise 31 percent or roughly two of those districts, but Alabama’s Republican-majority legislature adopted a congressional map with just one minority district.
The case against Louisiana’s congressional maps is also rooted in demographics. Louisiana has six congressional districts and a 33 percent Black population – an even larger minority share than Alabama. However, GOP legislators also adopted a congressional map with just one minority district that a federal judge ruled was racially gerrymandered.
Nevertheless, Supreme Court watchers say the bench has been anything but consistent. Its conservative majority has demonstrated a willingness to obliterate decades of legal precedent to fit what some critics say is a partisan agenda. The fact that SCOTUS’s ruling adhered to long-standing precedent came as a surprise to many who were expecting a further dismantling of one of few remaining federal protections against gerrymandering and voter suppression.
“We were hopeful, but we were honestly preparing for the worst,” Evans said.
If the case is remanded to the 5th Circuit and leads to a victory for the Black plaintiffs, it’s not yet clear how the appeals court will remedy the current map.
When the Supreme Court stayed the Louisiana case almost a year ago, a federal district court judge was about to enact a court-drawn map to replace the one the legislature adopted. Judge Shelly Dick had come to that decision after lawmakers repeatedly failed to follow her orders to draw a map that didn’t unlawfully tilt elections in favor of white conservative candidates.
Whether the legislature will get another chance to draw a new map or the court will immediately take the reins has been the subject of speculation.
When asked about the situation Thursday, Gov. John Bel Edwards suggested the court might have little patience left for the Republican lawmakers. Qualifying for the next congressional election is roughly a year away, so there might not be time to convene a special session and hope the lawmakers draw a lawful map, he said.
Neither Schexnayder nor Cortez would say if their GOP colleagues would have the political will to draw a second majority-Black district if the court orders it.
“The Louisiana case was very different than the Alabama case,” Cortez said. “We still have an opportunity [to win] in the 5th Circuit…There’s a lot of legal roads to travel along before we would ever be called back into a special session.”
The Milligan ruling is also expected to impact the state’s legislative districts. The LDF and ACLU of Louisiana filed a motion Friday to lift a stay in a separate federal gerrymandering lawsuit, Nairne v. Ardoin. The groups originally brought that suit in March 2022 after the legislature adopted its current state House and Senate maps.
Like the Robinson case, a federal court issued a stay in Nairne last August to await the Supreme Court’s decision in the Alabama case.
This article originally published in the June 19, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
