The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that another congressional map may have to be redrawn amid claims that it inappropriately dilutes the influence of black voters in the state.
“The writ of certiorari before judgment is dismissed as improvidently granted. The stay heretofore entered by the Court on June 28, 2022, is vacated,” the court wrote Monday (pdf) before it said that the case needs to be resolved before congressional elections in Louisiana in November 2024. “This will allow the matter to proceed before the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for review in the ordinary course and in advance of the 2024 congressional elections in Louisiana.”
It’s not clear if there were any dissents. The order was unsigned.
The justices had taken up the case last year but put it on hold pending their ruling in a similar case from Alabama, which they issued on June 8. The justices dismissed the appeal by Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin of a federal judge’s decision that the map drawn by the Republican-led state legislature of the House districts likely discriminated unlawfully based on race.
U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick last year directed Louisiana’s legislature create two, rather than just one, House districts where black voters represent the majority of voters, a decision that could boost Democratic chances of regaining control next year of the House.
Monday’s order follows the court’s rejection earlier this month of a congressional redistricting map in Alabama that also unfroze the Louisiana case. In both the Alabama and Louisiana cases, plaintiffs had claimed that black voters are a majority in just one congressional district in their respective states.
Lower courts had argued that the maps raised concerns that black voting power had been diluted, which goes in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.
State officials in Louisiana were sued last year over a congressional map passed by Republicans in the state legislature that, according to multiple reports, made one of its six congressional districts majority black.
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