Supreme Court agrees to review Louisiana congressional map that favors Democrats

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal over Louisiana’s more Democratic-friendly congressional districts, though the case won’t impact this year’s election.

The fight over how to divvy up the state into six congressional districts has been playing out for years, with repeated stops at the Supreme Court. The current map, which was drawn after court orders found that the initial version diluted the power of Black voters, includes two majority-Black districts.

The decision, expected next year, could have significant ramifications for other states because it may answer how far lawmakers can go to consider the race of voters under the Constitution when they are attempting to draw lines that comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Louisiana told the Supreme Court it was caught in an “endless game of ping-pong.” Its first map after the 2020 census was invalidated by federal courts because the state included only a single majority-Black district, even though Black residents make up roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population. When it redrew the map to include two majority-Black districts, a group of “non-African American” plaintiffs that included a number of prominent White Republicans sued the state for what they said was an overreliance on race. A special three-judge district court ruled in their favor.

At its most basic level, the current map gives Louisiana Democrats a chance to add a second member to their delegation this year. More broadly, the case has been watched closely by civil rights groups and election experts for its potential national impact.

The fight implicates much deeper controversies that could reach beyond the Bayou State, including how the Supreme Court handles similar redistricting cases and how state mapmakers are supposed to think about race as they also attempt to draw political advantage into the boundaries of each district.

The new district at issue in the case slashes diagonally from Shreveport in the northwest of the state to Baton Rouge in the southeast for some 250 miles to create a district where Black residents make up some 54% of voters – up from about 24% under the old lines.

Louisiana’s map came before the Supreme Court earlier this year on its emergency docket in May, when the court allowed the districts to be used for the November election.

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