In Louisiana Voting Case, Supreme Court Does Right Thing. WHAT ARE THEY UP TO?

SCOTUS restores two majority-Black districts in Louisiana. HENGHHHH?

Photo by Jesse Collins on Unsplash

In a bit of a surprise victory for voting rights, the US Supreme Court yesterday restored a redistricting map for the state of Louisiana that includes two districts where Black voters have a majority. The Court threw out a lower federal court decision that claimed providing representation for Black voters was an unconstitutional “racial gerrymander,” likely meaning Democrats will pick up a seat in the US House.

The decision settles for now the question of what map will be used this year, although the case is still ongoing, meaning there’s no guarantee the district lines will remain the same in 2026. Heck, maybe it’ll all be contested right through the next Census in 2030.

Louisiana officials had asked the Court to rule by May 15 so they would be able to plan for this fall’s election.

As NBC News points out, the Court’s political alignment seemed a bit strange, but only at first glance:

The court's three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing that the state still had time to draw a map that would address the various legal questions that have been raised. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority.

"There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out from the November election," Jackson wrote.

The liberal justices have objected in previous cases when the court has acted to block changes to district maps or election laws in an election year, often in ways that benefited Republicans.

Jackson’s dissent didn’t necessarily disagree with the makeup of the map, but argued the Court shouldn’t have rushed the map just to meet the state’s deadline. Instead, she said, the Court should have engaged with the “question of how to elect representatives consistent with our shared commitment to racial equality,” which has now been punted yet again. Considering what this Court has been doing to voting rights, maybe that’s just as well?

You may also recall that Justice Jackson was similarly adamant — and mostly ignored — in the arguments over Donald Trump’s “immunity” case that instead of fiddling around with hypotheticals, the Court should just get right at the simple question of whether presidents can commit crimes under the guise of “official acts.” YOU BONEHEADS.

Politico offers a brief overview of the fight over Louisiana’s redistricting following the 2020 Census, and by “brief” we mean it still took multiple paragraphs and could have been far longer. The shorter shorter version was that in 2022, a federal court said the redistricting map drawn by the Republican-controlled Lege violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters. Louisiana’s voting-age population is about one-third Black, but of the six districts the state has, the map only included one with a Black majority. So please correct that and add another Black-majority district to be fair, you jerks. The jerks then appealed.

But with the 2022 midterms coming up, the Supremes decided it was too close to the election to try for justice, and put the case on hold. The 2022 election took place with the map the lower court had tried to toss out, so Louisiana only elected one Democrat to Congress.

Then the Supremes upheld the lower court decision, telling Louisiana to do a new map with two districts representing Black voters. The Lege, after much delay and whining, finally managed that earlier this year, and then Republicans and some white jerks were aggrieved, because the new majority-Black district took a chunk out of the existing Sixth district held by Republican Garret Graves. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) didn’t like it either, because oh no another likely Democratic seat, how unfair!

A group of self-identified “non-Black voters” quickly challenged the new map, alleging that it was an impermissible racial gerrymander. Just weeks before the state’s self-imposed May 15 deadline to have a map in place, a split three-judge federal panel sided with those “non-Black voters” and struck down the new lines.

But even some Republicans were worried that remaking everything at the last minute — again! — would lead to chaos, so the Supremes’ decision yesterday means the matter is temporarily settled. After this year’s election, the whole goddamn fuck-tussle can start all over again.

And indeed, Paul Hurd, one of the attorneys for the poor oppressed non-Black voters, bravely predicted his clients would eventually prevail, even if it takes until after the election:

“The state of Louisiana enacted a brutal racial gerrymander that segregates its voters based on their race,” he said in a statement. “Louisiana politicians passed the law at the last minute, lost in court, and then cynically ran out the clock on a replacement map.”

OK, actually we agree with the last bit, just not the “brutal racial gerrymander” crap.

Gosh, wasn’t it wise of Chief Justice John Roberts to decide back in 2013 that racism was no longer an issue in US America anymore, so we didn’t need most of that silly old Voting Rights Act?

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Supreme Court Update: Special "Why Are You Not Drunk Already Everything Is Awful" Edition

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[Politico / NBC News / WaPo]

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