Supreme Court to Hear Louisiana Congressional Map Dispute

The case, which will not affect this election cycle, involves a legal fight over how the state draws its voting maps and could determine the political power of Black voters there.

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a long-running dispute over a congressional map in Louisiana that includes a second district with a majority of Black voters.

The case will not affect this election cycle, but a ruling could reshape how states interpret the Voting Rights Act in drawing voting maps. A shift in majority-Black districts in Louisiana could help determine the balance of power in the House of Representatives at a time when control rests on razor-thin margins.

A group of Louisiana voters asked the Supreme Court to intervene after the Republican-controlled Legislature in the state redrew a voting map to include two majority-Black districts.

At issue is whether the Republican-drawn map violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

The dispute began after the 2020 census, which showed that the Black population in the state had increased, prompting the Legislature to redraw its map. Its original map had only one district in which Black residents constituted a majority, out of six districts in the state.

Louisiana is one of several Southern states forced by the courts to revise its congressional maps after accusations of racial discrimination. According to the 2020 census, nearly a third of the population in the state is Black.

In response, the Republican-led Legislature redrew the map, but a federal judge barred the state from using it, finding that the map likely violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because only one of the six congressional districts had a majority Black population.

In January, Louisiana lawmakers approved a version of the map that added a second district with a majority of Black voters.

Under the new map, the second district links communities in Baton Rouge, the state’s capital, in the southeastern part of the state, with Shreveport, in the state’s northwest.

A group of residents who identify as non-African American and who are known in court filings as the “Callais plaintiffs,” challenged the new version of the map, saying it amounted to a racial gerrymander. They added that lawmakers had moved to “segregate voters based entirely on their races,” and had improperly stitched together “communities in far-flung regions of Louisiana.”

In late April, a divided panel of federal judges sided with the Callais plaintiffs, temporarily blocking the state from using the new map. The panel said the new map likely violated the Constitution because race had been the Legislature’s predominant consideration.

In May, a divided Supreme Court paused the lower-court decision, temporarily reinstating the congressional map that included the second majority-Black district.