WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday hears an unusual case in which civil rights groups are in a tentative alliance with Republican officials in defending a Louisiana congressional map that includes two majority Black districts for the first time in decades.
The justices took up an appeal brought by the state over its efforts to draw a map while being sued from the left and right about whether it appropriately considered race in doing so.
The case has a complicated history, resulting from an original map drawn by the Legislature after the 2020 census that included just one Black majority district out of the state’s six districts. About a third of the state’s population is Black.
Civil rights groups, including the Legal Defense Fund, sued and ultimately won, arguing that the Voting Rights Act required two majority Black districts.
That led to a new lawsuit filed by a group of self-identified “non-African American” voters led by Phillip Callais and 11 other plaintiffs who said the latest map, which is currently in effect, violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which requires that the law applies equally to everyone.
A federal court struck the new map down, but the state successfully asked the Supreme Court to block the ruling last year, meaning the map was used in November’s election. Rep. Cleo Fields, D-La., ultimately won the newly drawn district.
Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether the 2024 map can remain in place, weighing several legal questions, including whether the plaintiffs who sued even had standing to do so.
The court could also go further and delve into the fraught question of to what extent the Voting Rights Act, which requires the consideration of race when drawing districts, is in tension with the 14th Amendment, which conservatives say bars any consideration of race in government decisions.
Although state officials are defending the new map, they also said in court filings that the court should consider barring such lawsuits altogether as “non-justiciable,” meaning they are so inherently political that the issue should be left to the political branches.
Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga wrote that currently the state is being sued no matter what it does, causing it to spend millions of dollars on legal expenses.
“No one truly wins that fight — the state loses, its voters lose, the judiciary loses, and democracy itself loses,” he wrote.
The challengers said in court papers that the new map constitutes an “odious racial gerrymander.” None of the state’s reasons constitute a “compelling justification for violating the 14th Amendment,” they added.
Meanwhile, the civil rights groups that originally sued urged the court to uphold the new map, pointing out that in drawing it, the state relied in part on partisan political considerations aimed at protecting incumbent Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, of Louisiana.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority that is often receptive to conservative claims that the Constitution is “colorblind,” meaning no consideration of race can ever be lawful even if it is aimed at remedying past discrimination.
But in an unexpected move, the court in 2023 reaffirmed the Voting Rights Act in another congressional redistricting case arising from Alabama.
