Supreme Court Postpones Louisiana Redistricting Case to Autumn

The Supreme Court announced it is postponing to the autumn consideration of Louisiana’s Congressional redistricting.

When the legislature redrew Congressional district boundaries ater the 2020 Census, it devised only one of the six districts with a majority Black population. To appropriately represent the proportion of the state that is Black, there should be two such districts.

Alabama was thrashed by the Supreme Court two years ago for doing the same thing, violating the Voting Rights Act by diluting the Black vote. Alabama had to draw boundaries that were more fair.

As Louisiana lost cases in court against its redistricting and saw what happened to Alabama, the legislature redistricted again, this time drawing two majority-Black districts while still creating “safe” districts for Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

A group of “non-African-American voters” filed a lawsuit against the new map, saying it was racially gerrymandered.

Louisiana’s defense is that the latest redistricting map is politically gerrymandered. The state’s lawyer told the Supreme Court, “We’re talking about the Speaker of the House. No rational state gambles with those high-stakes seats.”

Instead of grappling with this now, the Court put it off until after the summer recess.

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