The Supreme Court docket has teed up a significant case for subsequent time period on whether or not racial redistricting is unconstitutional.
In a Friday night time scheduling order, the excessive court docket requested events to file briefs on whether or not Louisiana’s creation of a second majority-minority Home seat violates the 14th or fifteenth Amendments. The query might considerably curtail efforts to drive states to create majority-minority congressional districts.
The order is a part of a case from the 2024 time period relating to Louisiana’s congressional map that justices determined to carry over for re-argument. The justices set a deadline of Aug. 27 for briefs to be filed by appellants on the query. Reply briefs are due Oct. 3, the Friday earlier than the start of the 2025 session.
In June, the Supreme Court docket ordered additional arguments over Louisiana’s congressional map that was permitted by the state’s GOP-led legislature and created a second majority-Black district.
An order from the court docket issued on the final day of the 2024 time period restored the case to its calendar for reargument. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the transfer to order extra arguments and mentioned the court docket ought to have determined the case.
The transfer meant the state’s map with two majority-Black districts would stay intact for now.
The district strains on the heart of the dispute had been invalidated in 2022 by a three-judge decrease court docket panel, which sided with a gaggle of self-described “non-African-American voters” who had challenged the Home map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The map wasn’t the primary crafted by the state’s Republican-led legislature within the wake of the 2020 Census. As a substitute, Louisiana’s efforts to redraw district strains, as all states do after the census, have resulted in a yearslong authorized battle that has been earlier than the Supreme Court docket twice earlier than.
The case demonstrated the challenges state lawmakers face when making an attempt to stability making an attempt to adjust to the Voting Rights Act with out relying an excessive amount of on race within the drawing the political strains, which may run afoul of the Structure’s Equal Safety Clause. The Supreme Court docket’s choice can also be prone to have implications for the stability of energy within the Home within the 2026 midterm elections, when Republicans will attempt to maintain onto their tiny majority.
Jan Crawford
contributed to this report.
