Louisiana asks Fifth Circuit to overturn congressional map ruling

(CN) — Louisiana officials asked the Fifth Circuit Tuesday to overturn a lower court finding that the state’s congressional map illegally dilutes the Black vote and must be redrawn.

In 2022, the Louisiana Legislature drew a new congressional map that included only one majority Black district. A group of Black Louisiana voters and civil rights organizations sued, arguing the map unfairly limited Black voting power in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Black residents make up approximately one-third of the Louisiana population, according to the 2020 census.

U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District of Louisiana, a Barack Obama appointee, agreed, and in February 2024 she ordered the state to redraw its map to create fairer racial representation.

Attorneys representing various state elected officials told a three-judge Fifth Circuit panel Tuesday that Judge Dick erred in her interpretation of the evidence and that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the drawing of congressional districts they don’t live in.

Dick should have limited her ruling to the districts the plaintiffs live in, the officials contend, rather than ordering the state to redraw the whole map.

The plaintiffs say Dick correctly found that the evidence showed the map constituted an illegal racial gerrymander.

As an example, Megan Keenan, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, pointed to the trial testimony of plaintiff Steven Harris, who said the Black community in the majority-Black city of Natchitoches had for years asked their elected officials to help fix the city’s dilapidated roads — and that they were ignored until 2011, when the city was drawn into a majority-Black House district.

“Pastor Harris was in tears when he recounted this at trial,” Keenan said. “He testified that his community began to believe again that the political process could work and it could work for them, too. And then in 2022, under the plan we’re currently challenging, the Legislature dismantled that majority Black district. That is the type of dilution that violates the Voting Rights Act.”

The panel hearing arguments in the case, Nairne v. Landry , was made up of U.S. Circuit Judge James Dennis, a Bill Clinton appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Catharina Haynes, a George W. Bush appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, a Joe Biden appointee.

Meanwhile, plaintiffs in a separate case currently before the Supreme Court are challenging a more recent congressional map, which the Louisiana Legislature drew in January 2024 in response to a Fifth Circuit order in the Nairne case. A group of self-described “non-African American” voters say the later map, which added a second majority Black district, is unconstitutional because the Legislature illegally prioritized race when drawing it.

In April 2024, a three-judge district panel ruled 2-1 that the new map is unconstitutional — but the Supreme Court stayed that decision to allow the map to be used in the November 2024 election. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a final ruling in the case by this summer.