Louisiana is once again without a valid congressional map following a new federal court ruling issued Tuesday evening, and it's not yet clear how the matter might get resolved. But proposals put forward earlier in the complex litigation that has led up to this moment show that there are readily available options that should satisfy the competing legal principles at play.
One group of Black voters and civil rights organizations who originally challenged the map the state adopted in 2022 after the most recent census have already appealed the new ruling to the Supreme Court, and state Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, has said she will as well. Another set of Black voters have also asked the federal judge who barred the use of the 2022 map two years ago in a different case to reopen proceedings to consider a replacement plan.
The Supreme Court could stay the lower court's decision pending further argument or conclude that it came too late in the election season to take effect this year. Louisiana's candidate filing deadline, though the latest in the nation, is now less than three months away. State officials have also variously claimed that new maps would need to be in place by May 15 or May 30 to allow for the administration of this year’s elections, though an appeals court characterized those dates as “suggestions.”
Should other courts decline to intervene, however, the three-judge district court panel in Shreveport that just blocked Louisiana's map will begin the process of selecting a remedial plan when it holds a status conference with the parties on Monday.
Two judges on that court, both appointees of Donald Trump, held that the map that lawmakers passed in January violated the Constitution by excessively relying on race to create the new 6th District, a majority-Black constituency that stretched diagonally across Louisiana from Shreveport in the northwest to Baton Rouge in the center of the state. (A third judge, who was named to the bench by Bill Clinton, dissented, saying the map did not constitute a racial gerrymander.)
The legislature adopted that map after a different federal court in Baton Rouge (this one overseen by a single judge, Shelly Dick) determined two years ago that the state's 2022 map likely violated the Voting Rights Act by failing to establish a second district where Black voters could elect their preferred candidates.
In that case, plaintiffs demonstrated that it was possible to draw a compact district along the Mississippi border that would satisfy the VRA without running afoul of the Constitution by allowing race to predominate.
Such a district, anchored by Baton Rouge, would be home to a Black majority. Importantly, it would give Black voters—who almost always favor Black Democrats—the chance to send a representative of their choice to Congress in the face of overwhelming support for Republican candidates by white voters.
Louisiana's GOP-run legislature, however, rejected that approach, purely on political grounds. The VRA plaintiffs' proposal would have transformed the 5th District held by Rep. Julia Letlow, a popular figure among local Republicans and the only woman in the state's congressional delegation. Since this version of the 5th would become solidly blue, that would have forced Letlow to wage an uphill battle for reelection, run against a fellow Republican in a neighboring district, or retire.
Instead, lawmakers decided to target an incumbent who found himself very much on the outs with the state's new Republican governor: Rep. Garret Graves. Graves had antagonized Gov. Jeff Landry by supporting an alternative candidate in last year's gubernatorial election, a slight Landry was not about to forget after his resounding victory.
Doing so, however, meant crafting a sprawling 6th District that cut diagonally like a 250-mile backslash across the state. To ensure the Black voting-age majority necessary to comply with the VRA, this revamped 6th incorporated heavily Black areas in the two cities at either end—Baton Rouge and Shreveport—as well as in smaller cities like Alexandria and Lafayette and in more rural communities in between.
Republicans in the legislature, with the support of many Democrats, passed just such a plan, and Landry, knowing it would leave Graves without a plausible district to run in, readily signed it into law. Though the new map didn't resemble those they'd put forward in court, the VRA plaintiffs were happy to declare victory because the new-look 6th would achieve their ultimate goal of creating another district that would advance the cause of Black representation.
But this choice came with a risk—namely, that the map would get struck down as an unlawful racial gerrymander. And there was good reason to fear it might: As Daily Kos Elections' Jeff Singer explained before the map became law, the 6th closely resembled a district that had been invalidated by the courts 30 years earlier on those very grounds.
Following the adoption of this map in January, a group of plaintiffs describing themselves as "non-African American" voters filed a new federal lawsuit in Shreveport challenging the plan, saying its goal was to "segregate voters based entirely on their races."
Ultimately, a majority of the three-judge panel agreed, calling "the similarities of the two maps"—the 1994 and 2024 versions—"obvious." (The dissenting judge, Carl Stewart, said he believed that political considerations, not race, predominated.)
The majority's conclusion, however, should not prevent the adoption of a map like the one the VRA plaintiffs previously proposed, since Dick, the judge in the Baton Rouge case, rejected the argument that such an approach amounted to racial gerrymandering.
But the Shreveport court threw in a complicating obstacle by suggesting that the map it just struck down also erred by dividing three cultural regions—North Louisiana, Acadiana, and the city of Baton Rouge—between districts. The dissent pointed out that this objection was bunk because these areas have frequently been split up, but should the majority persist, that could make it impossible to pass any VRA-compliant map because the VRA plaintiffs' original proposal also cuts across regional lines.
Whatever happens next, the courts will have to move quickly since the state currently lacks a congressional map and the elections are now just half a year away. Louisiana does, however, offer a somewhat more forgiving timeline because the state does not hold traditional primaries.
Instead, all candidates from all parties run together on a single ballot in November, with the top two advancing to a December runoff in the event no one takes a majority. That means the state won't have to print ballots for several more months.
Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to note that one group of plaintiffs has asked a judge to reopen a separate case for remedial proceedings while another group of plaintiffs have appealed to the Supreme Court. Further details regarding state officials’ assertions about when a new map must be in place have also been added.
