Justices Jackson, Alito spar over Supreme Court decision to expedite Louisiana redistricting ruling
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, granting an unusual request Monday by Louisiana Republicans, allowed last week’s major voting rights ruling to take immediate effect.
Subscribe to read this story ad-free
Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.
The ruling, which sparked an angry written exchange between liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and conservative Justice Samuel Alito, means the state does not have to wait the usual 32 days before a Supreme Court ruling is certified and sent back to a lower court.
Louisiana sought to suspend its ongoing primary elections so it could redraw congressional districts to take advantage of the ruling, which effectively gave states the green light to remove majority-black districts that had been designated to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The state aims to draw a new map that can be used for this year’s midterm elections. The current map includes two majority-black congressional districts held by Democrats. The other four seats are held by Republicans.
In last week’s ruling, the conservative majority gutted a key provision of the landmark 1965 election law, saying states, including those with a history of discrimination against black voters, can use their interest in consolidating partisan advantage as a defense when they are accused of diluting minority votes.
In his dissent, Jackson denounced the court’s decision to circumvent its normal practices in issuing final judgments, saying it “amounts to an endorsement of Louisiana’s rush to suspend the current election in order to adopt a new map.”
She noted that the court generally takes a dim view of last-minute changes to election procedures. Instead, on this occasion, the court “jumps into the fray” in an “unwarranted and reckless” manner, she added. The court’s two other liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented in last week’s case but did not join Jackson’s opinion.
Alito, who authored last week’s ruling, responded with his own sharply worded opinion in which he called Jackson’s reasoning “baseless and insulting.”
Responding to Jackson’s accusation that the court is abusing its power, Alito called the assertion “a baseless and completely irresponsible accusation.”
