WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican attacks on core provisions voting rights law Designed to protect racial minorities, supreme court This week, it’s been more than a decade since justices struck down another pillar of the 60-year-old law.
In arguments Wednesday, lawyers for Louisiana and the Trump administration will try to persuade the justices to clear the case. 2nd most majority black Congressional district in the state And it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible, to consider race in redistricting.
“Race-based redistricting is fundamentally unconstitutional,” Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill said in a filing with the state Supreme Court.
Battle of mid-decade The debate over congressional redistricting has already been unfolding across the country since President Donald Trump began urging Texas and other Republican-controlled states to redraw their boundaries to help Republicans maintain a narrow majority in the House. The Louisiana ruling strengthens that effort and could spill over into state legislatures and local districts.
Just two years ago, a conservative-dominated court Ended affirmative action in university admissionsmay be easier to accept. At the center of the legal battle are Chief Justice John RobertsHe has long had an eye on groundbreaking civil rights legislation, from his days as a young attorney at the Justice Department during the Reagan administration to his current job.
In 2006, in his first major voting rights case as chief justice, Roberts wrote a dissent, saying, “This is a despicable business that divides us along racial lines.”
In 2013, Roberts spoke for the majority in an effort to water down the landmark law’s requirement that states and localities with a history of discrimination, primarily in the South, must get approval before making election-related changes.
“Our country has changed. Racism in voting has gone too far, but Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to fix the problem is relevant,” Roberts wrote.
The offending clause depends on the current situation
The challenge under a provision known as Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act must, among other things, be able to highlight the current racial polarization of the vote and the inability of minorities to elect candidates of their choice.
“Race remains a significant factor in current voting patterns in Louisiana, as it does in many other parts of the country,” said Sarah Brannon, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project.
The Louisiana case first reached this stage after Black voters and civil rights groups successfully challenged a lower court ruling that threw out the first congressional map drawn by the Republican-led state Legislature after the 2020 census. The map shows that of the state’s six House seats, which are one-third black, only one is majority black.
Louisiana appealed to the Supreme Court, which ultimately added a second majority black district after the justices’ opinion. 5-4 ruling In 2023, a similar case involving Alabama’s congressional maps was found to have potentially violated the Voting Rights Act.
Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined three of their more liberal colleagues in the Alabama results. Roberts rejected what he described as “Alabama’s attempt to reinvent our Section 2 jurisprudence.”
That might have cleared things up, but a group of white voters complained that race, not politics, was the main factor driving the new Louisiana map. Three judges agreed, leading to the current High Court case.
Instead of issuing a decision in June, the justices asked the parties to answer a potentially larger question: “Whether a state’s intentional creation of majority-minority congressional districts violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”
Adopted in the aftermath of the Civil War, these amendments aimed to bring political equality to black Americans and gave Congress the power to take any necessary action. Almost a century later, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A treasure from the civil rights erato finally end relentless efforts to prevent blacks from voting in former Confederate states.
It is rare for a second argument to be heard before the Supreme Court.
A new call for arguments may herald major changes by the high court. The 2010 Citizens United decision, which led to a dramatic increase in independent spending in US elections, came after a second debate.
“If you think back to how Citizens United unfolded, it feels a little bit like Citizens United to me in that it was initially a close First Amendment challenge,” said Donald Verrilli, a top Supreme Court lawyer in the Obama administration who defended the Voting Rights Act in the 2013 case.
Verrilli said that in some of the possible outcomes of the Louisiana case, the majority believes that absent intentional discrimination, there is effectively no need for the court to redistrict the case. Mr. Kavanaugh briefly raised this issue two years ago.
The Supreme Court separately backed away from partisan gerrymandering claims in a 2019 opinion also written by Roberts. Limiting or eliminating most racial discrimination claims in federal courts would give state legislatures broad discretion to draw electoral districts subject only to state constitutional limits.
Just one vote change from the Alabama lawsuit could flip the outcome.
With new calls for debate, Louisiana has changed its position and is no longer defending its map.
The Trump administration also joined Louisiana. The Justice Department has previously defended the Voting Rights Act under administrations of both major political parties.
Congressman Cleo Fields has been here before.
For four years in the 1990s, Louisiana had the second-largest black-majority district before a court invalidated it on the grounds that it was too dependent on race. Mr. Fields was a rising star in state Democratic politics at the time, winning election twice. When new maps were put in place and he returned to one of the state’s majority black districts, he did not run again.
Mr. Fields is one of two black Democrats. won the parliamentary election It took place last year in newly drawn districts in Alabama and Louisiana.
It once again represents the troubled neighborhoods that Roberts described in March as “snakes running from one end of the state to the other,” picking up Black residents along the way.
If so, civil rights attorney Stuart Naifeh told Roberts, it’s because of slavery, Jim Crow laws and a persistent lack of economic opportunity for Black people in Louisiana.
Fields said the court’s earlier decision eliminating federal review of potentially discriminatory voting laws left few options for protecting racial minorities, making it even more important to preserve Title II.
“Without the Voting Rights Act and the creation of majority-minority districts, they will never win Congressional elections,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Gary Fields contributed to this report.
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