NRF: Fate Of Louisiana’s Fair Map Before Supreme Court

For Immediate Release
November 4, 2024
Contact
Madia Coleman
coleman@redistrictingfoundation.org

Washington, D.C. – Today, the Supreme Court of the United States announced it will hear oral arguments in the consolidated cases of Robinson v. Callais and Louisiana v. Callais. This case will determine not only the future of Louisiana’s Voting Rights Act (VRA)-compliant congressional map, but also could impact the future of Section 2 of the VRA itself. Just last year, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Allen v. Milligan upholding Section 2, and the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF), the 501(c)(3) affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), played a central role in that victory.  Once Milligan was decided, Louisiana finally enacted a VRA-compliant map – capping two years of litigation in Louisiana initiated by the NRF. 

“For far too long Louisianians have had to contend with a map that was not representative of the people who live and vote there. As held recently by multiple courts, the Voting Rights Act requires Louisiana to have a congressional map with two Black opportunity districts,” said Marina Jenkins, Executive Director of the National Redistricting Foundation. “So the decision in this case should be easy. The lower court’s decision to block Louisiana’s new fair and representative map—ordered by a peer court after it considered two years of litigation to enforce Section 2—was ideologically driven and inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court has a duty to uphold its own precedent and protect voters' rights to equal representation as enshrined in the Voting Rights Act, and that is the argument we will be making to them.”

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND: 

Prior to the current map, Black voters in Louisiana, who are roughly one-third of the state’s population, comprised a majority of only one of the state's six congressional districts. The rest of the state’s Black voter population were held below 33% in each of the other five districts, preventing Black Lousianans from electing a candidate of their choice in all but one of the state’s six congressional districts. Because that map was a textbook violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and multiple federal courts saw it as such, in January 2024, the Louisiana Legislature enacted  the current Voting Rights Act-compliant map, which includes two Black opportunity districts. As a result, Black voters in Louisiana now have an equal opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice in the state’s congressional map. 

In 2022, the NRF, in support of a group of tenacious Louisiana voters, initiated a successful challenge against the state’s gerrymandered congressional map in a case known as Robinson v. Ardoin. The current VRA-compliant congressional map was enacted in 2024 as a result of that case. Immediately after the VRA-compliant map was enacted, a group with “some familiar Republican names” filed a lawsuit against the map.  In a case known as Callais v. Landry, in one of the most ideologically-driven, conservative federal courts in the country struck down Louisiana’s fair map, ignoring Supreme Court precedent upholding and enforcing Section 2 of the VRA set less than a year before in Allen v. Milligan. 

The NRF provided financial support and litigation strategy for a set of VRA litigants, known as the Galmon plaintiffs, throughout the litigation in Louisiana, and also submitted an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court asking the Court to protect Louisiana’s Voting Rights Act-compliant map.  The NRF also initiated and directed the successful challenge against Alabama’s congressional map in Allen v. Milligan, a precedent-setting case before the Supreme Court that led to the enforcement of the VRA in Louisiana. 

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