The Supreme Court of the United States restored a federal court’s decision that Louisiana’s congressional lines likely diluted the power of Black voters in the state— an immediate reverberation of the high court’s recent decision that affirmed a key piece of the Voting Rights Act.
Litigation over the map will now continue in a lower court.
The Supreme Court agreed last summer, to hear Louisiana’s appeal after a district judge ruled that the state’s congressional lines likely diluted the power of Black voters in the state. The Supreme Court also imposed a stay of the judge’s order while the justices weighed a similar redistricting case in Alabama.
However, the Supreme Court on Monday changed its course, lifted its stay, and dismissed its decision to hear the Louisiana appeal, arguing that it took the case prematurely.
The case should continue “in the ordinary course and in advance of the 2024 congressional elections in Louisiana”, the Supreme Court said.
The new order effectively leaves the lower court’s decision that ordered the state to redraw its map in effect — for now. The case will head to the 5th Circuit of Appeals, a famously conservative appeals court that legal experts are already speculating would likely look skeptically on allegations of racial vote dilution, despite the high court’s recent decision.
Louisiana currently has one majority Black seat out of its six districts. Louisiana is approximately one-third Black.