WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Black voters asked the Supreme Court to take up a case to determine whether Louisiana will maintain the map enacted by the state legislature this year, which includes two majority-Black districts, following the 2024 elections. The appeal in Robinson v. Callais comes after the Court granted an emergency stay in May, pausing a district court’s decision to overturn the map, and allowing it to go into effect for the 2024 elections. The question remains whether the map will stand for the remainder of the decade until the next redistricting process.
Louisiana’s current congressional map was drawn in direct response to a separate lawsuit, Robinson v. Landry. There, a federal court found that the state’s map passed in 2022, which included only one majority-Black district, likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The same Black voters and civic organizations who filed today with the Supreme Court are responsible for that landmark win, which has been sustained on appeal.
“In January, the Louisiana Legislature finally did what it should have done in 2022: pass a fair map that reflects the diversity of the great state of Louisiana,” said Stuart Naifeh, redistricting manager for the Legal Defense Fund. “It was wrong for the lower court to disrupt the state’s effort to do the right thing and throw the 2024 election into chaos. The Supreme Court set that right for this election cycle by allowing, and as our filing explains, federal law and the Constitution require that Louisiana maintain this new map until the next census.”
“This year, Black voters in Louisiana will have an opportunity to elect their candidates of choice for two congressional seats—the same should be true moving forward,” said Ashley Shelton, president/CEO of Power Coalition for Equity and Justice. “The law, and basic principles of fairness, point in this direction. Black voters have mobilized since the beginning of the redistricting process in Louisiana. We will continue to mobilize to the polls. And we will continue to fight for fair maps until these cases are complete.”
“There should be no question that Black voters deserve an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates in two congressional districts,” said Michael McClanahan, president of the NAACP Louisiana State Conference. “We fought for that reality this year and we will continue to fight to make sure it remains our reality in the future.”
In response to litigation filed by a group of voters calling themselves “non-African American,” a divided panel of three federal court judges in Callais v. Landry overturned Louisiana’s current congressional map as a racial gerrymander in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The majority held that legislators improperly prioritized race, and that the map was not tailored to comply with the VRA—despite the separate courts’ rulings that the VRA required a map with two majority-Black districts. The Callais decision puts in tension decades of precedent balancing the requirements of the U.S. Constitution and VRA.
While the Supreme Court temporarily put the district court panel’s decision on hold pending the November elections, today’s filing asks the court to take up the case and decide the merits of the appeal.
“Black voters in Louisiana have equitable representation in Congress for the upcoming election, and that should not change,” said Nora Ahmed, ACLU of Louisiana legal director. “The legislature has complied with the Voting Rights Act in passing a fair congressional map. We look forward to a swift reversal of the decision that found the map constituted an unlawful racial gerrymander.”
“We continue to fight for the fundamental rights of Black Louisianians, whose voting power has been severely diluted,” said Sarah Brannon, deputy director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “We’re asking the Supreme Court to summarily reverse the earlier misguided decision from a divided three-judge federal court panel.”
“We continue to fight until the voters of Louisiana get the map that they deserve.” said Alora Thomas, senior counsel, Harvard Election Law Clinic,” said Alora Thomas, senior counsel, Harvard Election Law Clinic.
The Robinson litigants are civil rights organizations, including the NAACP Louisiana State Conference and Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, as well as nine individual Black voters: Dr. Press Robinson, Edgar Cage, Dr. Dorothy Nairne, Bishop Edwin René Soulé, Dr. Alice Washington, Reverend Clee Earnest Lowe, Commissioner Davante Lewis, Martha Davis, and Ambrose Sims. They are represented by the Legal Defense Fund, American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Louisiana, Harvard Election Law Clinic, Louisiana Justice Institute, Louisiana attorney John Adcock, and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.
