Supreme Court raises the stakes in a Louisiana redistricting case

Washington – The Supreme Court has widened the scope of a redistribution dispute of the Louisiana congress which has been underway for months by ordering a new briefing on a legal issue which could further weaken the Historical Voting Law.

The court made an order asking lawyers to determine whether, seeking to comply with the 1965 law which protects the voting rights of minorities, Louisiana violated the 14th and 15th amendments of the Constitution promulgated after the civil war to ensure that blacks were also treated under the law.

If the court declares that the state violates the Constitution, this would mean that states cannot cite the need to comply with the law on voting rights if they use race as a consideration during the card drawing process, as they can currently.

Rick Hasen, an expert in the law of elections at the Faculty of Law of the UCLA, wrote on his blog by electoral law that the order “seems to question the constitutionality of article 2 of the law on voting rights”. This provision prohibits voting practices or rules that discriminate minority groups.

The conservative majority 6-3 of the Supreme Court is often receptive to the arguments that the Constitution is “Daltonian”, which means that no consideration of the race can never be legal even if it aims to correct past discrimination. In 2013, the court canceled a key provision of the law on voting rights in an Alabama case and weakened it in a case in 2021 Arizona.

The judges heard arguments in the Louisiana case on more technical and less controversial issues in March and were originally to make a decision at the end of June. Even then, the constitutional question is looming.

The new order did not indicate whether the court will hear another cycle of arguments before it makes a decision in the case.

Louisiana’s menu in question, which is currently in force, includes two mainly black black districts for the first time in years.

The complicated affair was born from disputes on a previous map drawn by the state legislature after the 2020 census which included a single black majority district from the six state districts. About a third of the state of the state is black.

Civil rights groups, including Legal Defense Fund, have won a legal challenge, arguing that the voting rights law required two mainly black districts.

But after the drawing of the new card, a group of self-identified “non-African” voters led by Phillip Callais and 11 other complainants filed another legal action, saying that the last card had violated the 14th amendment.

No more recently than 2023, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the law on voting rights in a case of redistribution of the Congress arising from Alabama. But the conservatives have raised questions about the question of whether the key elements of the law should ultimately be canceled.