A little over a week after Louisiana officials approved a congressional map with a second majority-Black district as part of an effort to resolve longstanding litigation, the state has been served with a new lawsuit challenging that solution.
Twelve “non-African American” voters are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the Western District of Louisiana, based in Shreveport. It argues the new map is unconstitutional, alleging legislators only considered race when they redrew the state’s congressional districts.
“Here, the State has engaged in explicit, racial segregation of voters and intentional discrimination against voters based on race,” the plaintiffs said. “The State has drawn lines between neighbors and divided communities. In most cases, the lines separate African American and non-African American voters from their communities and assign them to Districts with dominating populations far away.”
Lawmakers convened a special session in mid-January, with the goal of creating a congressional map that had a second majority-Black district. Previously, only one of the state’s six congressional districts was majority-Black, though Black residents make up about one-third of Louisiana’s population.
But during the session, they also sought to protect certain incumbent members of Congress and to minimize parish splits.
In the end, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 8, which turned U.S. Rep. Garret Graves’ district into the new majority-Black district. That seat is now likely to go to a Democrat, putting the political future of the Baton Rouge-based Republican at risk.
“Ultimately, the state of Louisiana enacted a congressional districting plan that separates our voters along purely racial lines without regard to any common interests,” Paul Hurd, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement. “This map should not be allowed for a single election.”
The new district connects Shreveport to Baton Rouge along the Interstate 49 corridor. The lawsuit, which alleges the new map violates the 14th and 15th Amendments of the Constitution, contends that district is not compact and amounts to a racial gerrymander.
But it was a different lawsuit that pushed legislators to draw the new map in the first place.
After the Legislature completed its once-in-a-decade redistricting process in 2022, civil rights group sued the state in federal court, arguing that the map was out of compliance with the Voting Rights Act and did not give Black voters a fair opportunity to elect candidates of choice.
U.S. District Chief Judge Shelly K. Dick, appointed by President Barack Obama, sided with the plaintiffs and was poised to redraw the map herself. After the state appealed with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel found Dick’s reasoning sound but gave state lawmakers one last chance to draw a new map themselves.
Had they not come up with a new map, Dick would have held a trial on the merits of the old one.
At the end of the special session, attorneys for the civil rights groups expressed optimism that the new map could resolve the litigation. However, they still have a chance to challenge the new map if they choose, and the case remains pending.
Jared Evans, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who has worked on that case, said in a statement that the new lawsuit did not come as a surprise.
“The specific map the Legislature adopted reflected its own political choices,” he said. “While we would like to see this case come to a resolution, we remain committed to defending the fairness of the political process and compliance with the Voting Rights Act.”
It was unclear Wednesday how the new lawsuit will impact the litigation that drove Louisiana to redraw its map initially. The original litigation was filed in the Middle District Court, based in Baton Rouge.
But Evans said his team was “confident” that Louisiana would “have a map in place for this fall’s elections that provides Black voters an opportunity to elect their preferred candidate in two out of Louisiana’s six congressional districts.”
Nancy Landry, the secretary of state, is the only named defendant in the new lawsuit. Her office declined to comment Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Gov. Jeff Landry did not return a request for comment. Landry defended Louisiana’s old congressional map when he was attorney general but convened the special session after he took office, throwing his support behind SB8.
Reporter Tyler Bridges contributed to this report.