Supreme Court rebuffs request for do-over in Voting Rights Act redistricting case

The Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request for a mulligan on last week’s major Voting Rights Act ruling, allowing Louisiana to rush to redraw its congressional map.

The court, without comment, denied the request for a new hearing.

Last week’s ruling found the state was wrongly pressured to redraw its map ahead of the 2024 election to include a second majority-Black congressional district. Normally, judges would then wait about a month before issuing the final judgment, or order, concluding the case.

But at Louisiana’s request, they expedited the mandate on Monday.

At the time, the justices pointed out that the losers in the case had not signaled that they would request a rehearing.

On Tuesday, after the High Court intervened, one of the parties belatedly declared that it would indeed request a rehearing and asked the judges to recall their judgment.

Such a rehearing is rarely granted, but forcing the court to wait several weeks before issuing the warrant would have complicated Louisiana’s plans to quickly draw up a new map.

No judge noted a dissent from Wednesday’s ruling denying the request.

But the timing of the case became a major problem.

Democrats complained after Louisiana’s governor halted voting in the primary, throwing out thousands of votes that had already been cast by mail.

But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who wrote the opinion in the original ruling, suggested in Monday’s ruling that the state needed to redo its maps because the old map had now been deemed “unconstitutional.”

He included a striking footnote saying that “the constitutional question was debated and discussed almost seven months ago.”

Legal observers interpreted this as a sign that the high court majority had wanted to issue its opinion earlier, but was delayed by dissenters in last week’s ruling.