WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court docket on Friday expanded the scope of a Louisiana congressional redistricting dispute that has been pending for months by ordering new briefing on a authorized query that might additional weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The court docket issued an order asking the legal professionals to handle whether or not, in searching for to adjust to the 1965 legislation that protects minority voting rights, Louisiana violated the Structure’s 14th and fifteenth Amendments enacted after the Civil Struggle to make sure Black folks have been handled equally underneath the legislation.
If the court docket guidelines that the state did violate the Structure, it will imply states can not cite the necessity to adjust to the Voting Rights Act in the event that they use race as a consideration in the course of the map-drawing course of, as they at the moment can.
Rick Hasen, an election legislation professional on the UCLA Faculty of Regulation. wrote on his Election Regulation Weblog that the order “seems to place the constitutionality of Part 2 of the Voting Rights Act into query.” That provision bars voting practices or guidelines that discriminate in opposition to minority teams.
The Supreme Court docket’s 6-3 conservative majority is commonly receptive to arguments that the Structure is “colorblind,” which means no consideration of race can ever be lawful even whether it is geared toward remedying previous discrimination. In 2013, the court docket struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in a case from Alabama and additional weakened it in a 2021 case from Arizona.
The justices heard arguments within the Louisiana case on extra technical, much less contentious questions in March and was initially anticipated to challenge a ruling by the tip of June. Even then, the constitutional challenge loomed massive.
The brand new order didn’t point out whether or not the court docket will hear one other spherical of arguments earlier than it points a ruling within the case.
The Louisiana map in query, which is at the moment in impact, consists of two majority Black districts for the primary time in years.
The sophisticated case arose from litigation over an earlier map drawn by the state legislature after the 2020 census that included only one Black majority district out of the state’s six districts. A few third of the state’s inhabitants is Black.
Civil rights teams, together with the Authorized Protection Fund, gained a authorized problem, arguing that the Voting Rights Act required two majority Black districts.
However after the brand new map was drawn, a bunch of self-identified “non-African American” voters led by Phillip Callais and 11 different plaintiffs filed one other lawsuit, saying the newest map violated the 14th Modification.
As lately as 2023, the Supreme Court docket reaffirmed the Voting Rights Act in a congressional redistricting case arising from Alabama. However conservatives raised questions on whether or not key components of the legislation ought to finally be struck down.
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