Louisiana is the latest battleground over contested congressional maps that some groups argue need additional majority-minority districts to match the state's demographics.
The United States Supreme Court's ruling on Alabama's congressional map opened up the floodgates for similar fights over maps critics of the additional districts claim amount to racial gerrymandering. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in a case involving Louisiana's congressional district map on Friday. Robinson v. Ardoin seeks to force Louisiana to draw a second majority-minority congressional district, and plaintiffs are using the recent Supreme Court decision in Allen v. Milligan to make their case.
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The Louisiana NAACP, the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, and many black voters filed two lawsuits in March 2022 that were consolidated into Robinson. They claimed the state was "packing" black voters into the 2nd Congressional District, the state's only majority-black district, and spreading other black voters among majority-white districts, which they claimed violated the Voting Rights Act.
Because black people make up about 30% of Louisiana's voting-age population, the plaintiffs in Robinson argue that 30% of the congressional districts in the state should be majority-black. Activists are citing Allen, the case that held Alabama was diminishing the power of black voters by refusing to draw two majority-black congressional districts.
The plaintiffs also argue that Republicans are delaying the implementation of a "compliant congressional map and then declaring that it is simply too late for implementation to occur."
However, there are some differences between Alabama and Louisiana's redistricting cases that could make the latter's outcome different.
Unlike in Alabama, there is no dense black population in Louisiana to support a second majority-black district, despite one-third of Louisiana's population being black. The Louisiana plaintiffs, instead, stitched together black populations across four cities that are separated by hundreds of miles, per the Wall Street Journal.
They pushed together urban and suburban portions of East Baton Rouge Parish with the rural "Delta Parishes." To compare, it would be like combining parts of the Bronx, Yonkers, and Buffalo to make a majority-black district in New York.
Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized in the Allen ruling that a majority-minority district can only be drawn if it “comports with traditional districting criteria, such as being contiguous and reasonably compact.
"Forcing proportional representation is unlawful and inconsistent with this court’s approach to implementing" Section 2, Roberts added.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits election practices or procedures that discriminate based on race. However, if the state weighs race too heavily, it could violate the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause, putting Louisiana in a hard position.
The appeals court must now decide whether Louisiana's map runs afoul of Roberts's regulations in Allen or if the precedent set in Allen allows for this level of gerrymandering based on race in the Bayou State.
In Alabama's case, the Supreme Court refused the state's request to run the 2024 elections under a new congressional map that did not have a second district after denying a similar one in June. Alabama officials contended the high court's recent decision left open the possibility of redrawing without a second majority-black district, but a lower court still struck the new map down.
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The anticipation of two new majority-black districts shifted the projected outcome of five different 2024 House races in Alabama to lean in favor of Democrats, as black voters typically lean heavily Democratic.
If allowed, redistricting in Louisiana could have an effect on the state's representation on Capitol Hill. Louisiana has one black member of Congress, Rep. Troy Carter (D-LA). He is the fifth black person to represent the state in Congress since Reconstruction, according to Democracy Docket.