In a win for Republicans, the Supreme Court revived Louisiana’s congressional map Tuesday by granting a stay on lower court injunctions.
The high court noted it will hold the case while it mulls a similar redistricting scuffle in Alabama during its next term. The Supreme Court agreed to issue the stay after Justice Samuel Alito received and referred the matter to the court. Three liberal members of the high court dissented.
DEMOCRATS POISED TO PICK UP HOUSE SEAT WITH LOUISIANA REDISTRICTING NOW IN COURT
“The application for stay presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is granted. The district court’s June 6, 2022, preliminary injunctions … are stayed. In addition, the application for stay is treated as a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment, and the petition is granted. The case is held in abeyance pending this Court’s decision,” the order says.
Earlier this month, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction against the map and ordered a new one drawn. The map hewed closely to the state’s prior congressional map, but the judge agreed with the plaintiffs that it likely breached the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of black voters in the state.
Roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population is black, but the Bayou State only has one majority-black district, the 2nd Congressional District, which has a 62% black population. The judge ordered a new map that added a second majority-black district. The GOP currently holds five of the state’s six seats — 83% of the state’s congressional seats in a state former President Donald Trump won by 58.46% in 2020.
An appeals court initially issued a stay against the district court decision a few days after the ruling but then lifted it shortly thereafter. At the behest of Gov. John Bel Edwards (D), the Republican-led state legislature held a special session to mull a new map, but negotiations collapsed, relegating the line-drawing process to the district court, which threatened to take over the apportionment process in the event that the legislature failed to produce a fresh map. Republicans began clamoring for a Supreme Court intervention in response.
Edwards had initially vetoed the map earlier this year, but the GOP-led state legislature overrode that veto in March.
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Louisiana has an election system in which all candidates run on the same ballot in November instead of holding primary races. In instances in which no candidate secures a majority of votes in a given race, the state uses runoff elections to select a winner.
The high court is expected to hold hearings for the Alabama case in October and is expected to reach a verdict by the end of June 2023.
With Louisiana’s map back in place, all states once again have legally binding congressional maps in place ahead of the midterm elections, according to data from the FiveThirtyEight redistricting tracker. About a dozen states have litigation pending over their maps.
