Louisiana
Court allows Louisiana to move forward with two majority-Black districts – SCOTUSblog
EMERGENCY DOCKET
on May 15, 2024
at 6:14 pm
The justices ruled on Louisiana’s voting map on Wednesday. (Guyyoung1966 via Wikimedia Commons)
The Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for Louisiana to use a new congressional map, containing two majority-Black districts, in the 2024 elections. In a brief unsigned order the justices blocked a ruling by a federal court that had barred the state from using the new map on the ground that legislators had relied too heavily on race when they drew it earlier this year. The order cited an election doctrine known as the Purcell principle – the idea that courts should not change election rules during the period just before an election because of the confusion that it will cause for voters and the problems that doing so could cause for election officials. The lower court’s order will remain on hold, the court indicated, while an appeal to the Supreme Court moves forward.
Defending the 2024 map, the Louisiana secretary of state had emphasized that the legislature had created the map in the wake of a ruling by another federal court holding that an earlier map, which contained only one majority-Black district, violated the Voting Rights Act.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented from Wednesday’s order. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan indicated only that they would have denied the requests to put the federal court’s ruling on hold. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, explaining that in her view it is too early for Purcell to apply and there was no reason for the Supreme Court to intervene at this stage.
The dispute has its roots in a challenge by Black voters and civil rights groups to the congressional map that the Louisiana legislature drew for the 2022 elections. Although the 2020 census revealed that Black people made up approximately a third of the state’s population, in February 2022, the legislature adopted a plan, known as H.B.1, that created only one (out of six districts) majority-Black district, which stretched northwest from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.
U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick ruled that H.B.1 likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit rejected a request from the state officials and Republican legislators defending the maps to put the judge’s decision on hold, but the Supreme Court paused the case until it issued its decision in June of last year in a similar challenge to Alabama’s congressional map.
After the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower courts, the 5th Circuit upheld Dick’s ruling that Louisiana likely violated the Voting Rights Act. The court of appeals gave the legislature until January 2024 to create a new plan.
In January, the legislature adopted – and Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed – a new map, known as S.B.8, that contained two majority-Black districts.
Nine days later, a group of 12 white voters went to a different federal court, where they argued that S.B.8 is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander – that is, it sorted voters based primarily on their race.
On April 30, a divided three-judge district court barred the state from using S.B.8 in future elections, holding that legislators had relied too heavily on race in drawing the map. Louisiana’s secretary of state indicated that May 15 would be the last day to adopt a new map for the 2024 elections, but the district court set a schedule that would lead to a new map by June 4.
Both Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry (who is not related to Gov. Jeff Landry) and the Black voters and civil rights groups who had challenged H.B.1 came to the Supreme Court earlier this month, asking the justices to put on hold the district court’s order prohibiting the use of S.B.8, as well as the proceedings to come up with a new map.
Landry told the Supreme Court that race was not the primary factor behind the state’s decision to enact S.B.8. Instead, she wrote, the legislature was motivated by the court orders indicating that the state would likely violate the Voting Rights Act unless two of the six congressional districts were majority Black. Turning those rulings “back on the Legislature would be a wholly unfair game of gotcha that this Court has never endorsed.”
The H.B.1 challengers echoed Landry’s contention, calling the district court’s order barring the state from using the 2024 map an “aggressive incursion on state sovereignty” that leaves the state “trapped between the competing hazards of liability under the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause,” which prohibits racial gerrymandering.
The legislature ultimately chose the 2024 map, Landry and the H.B.1 challengers contended, over other proposed versions because S.B.8 achieves the legislature’s political goals – specifically, protecting the districts of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Rep. Julia Letlow at the expense of Rep. Garret Graves, who had supported Landry’s opponent.
Landry urged the justices to act by May 15, calling the dispute a “textbook case” for a stay of the lower court’s decision under the Purcell principle. “Even marginally moving that date,” Landry suggested, “will result in chaos down the line as other deadlines are blown and election officials struggle to complete their tasks within further compressed timelines.” Otherwise, Landry told the court, the only map that the state would be able to use “and still avoid election case” is the H.B.1 map.
The voters challenging S.B.8 countered that the district court’s ruling barring the state from using S.B.8 was a “simple and straightforward application of the law to the facts.” The state’s overriding goal in drawing the map was to create two majority-Black districts, they maintained, so that it could avoid additional litigation over H.B.1. The secretary of state’s insistence that the legislature drew the two majority-Black districts to comply with the court orders rings hollow, the S.B.8 challengers argued, because the district court never issued a final ruling on whether “the VRA actually required a second majority-Black district in the State — much less on whether District 6 stretching from the Northwest to Southeast corners of the State could remedy any alleged violation.”
The S.B.8 challengers also pushed back against the suggestion that there was any need for the Supreme Court to put the district court’s order on hold, much less do so quickly. The district court is already slated to issue a new map by June 4, they noted, and the May 15 deadline posited by the secretary of state, they say, “is simply an invention for this litigation”: Both the secretary of state and the state told the Supreme Court last year that the election could go forward as long as a map was in place by late May. Moreover, they added, “despite the State’s oddly shrill and last-minute warnings of chaos, this leaves ample time” to adopt a new map and take the necessary steps “before November’s primary.”
In its brief order, the majority cited the Purcell principle, signaling that it was putting the April 30 decision by the district court on hold because of the looming 2024 elections. But in her dissent, Jackson contended that “Purcell has no role to play here. There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out from the November election,” she suggested. And she noted that the justices “have often denied stays of redistricting orders issued as close or closer to an election.”
“Rather than wading in now,” Jackson continued, she “would have let the District Court’s remedial process run its course before considering whether our emergency intervention was warranted.”
This article was originally published at Howe on the Court.
BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – South Louisiana’s coast has long served as a natural buffer between communities and rising water.
But since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost nearly 2,000 square miles of coastal land.
Dr. Torbjorn Tornqvist, a professor at Tulane University, said Louisiana is one of the most vulnerable coastal areas in the world because of climate change, sea level rise and subsidence.
“Louisiana is arguably one of the most vulnerable… perhaps the most vulnerable coastal zones in the world when it comes to climate change and sea level rise… and there are several reasons for that but one important reason is that we have high subsidence rates, and that means sea level rise here is a lot faster than the average around the world,” Tornqvist said.
Tornqvist is the lead author of a recently published study examining the long-term impacts of sea level rise across south Louisiana.
He said the issue is no longer limited to communities closest to the Gulf Coast.
“People are leaving the coast of Louisiana, but it’s going to accelerate over the course of the century. And those people are going to have to go somewhere, and it’s likely that a significant number are going to look at a place like Baton Rouge to move to,” Tornqvist said.
Since Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana has invested billions of dollars in large-scale restoration projects designed to reduce flood risk and strengthen the coast.
Some researchers believe those projects are important but not permanent fixes.
“We have…right now we have a pretty high-quality flood protection system that’s obviously way better than it was during Katrina and we should certainly keep investing in upkeep, but we also have to recognize that’s only going to take us so far,” Tornqvist said.
State officials say those investments remain critical as Louisiana adapts to future flood risks.
Micheal Hare, executive director of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said the state’s coastal plan is designed to balance restoration work with protection projects, including levees.
“Our 2023 master plan certainly incorporates the best science available to us to then come up with a balanced approach between how do we effectively spend money on restoration as well as money on protection projects like levees,” Hare said.
Hare said those projects will continue to evolve as future risks change. CPRA and the Army Corps of Engineers are re-evaluating portions of the West Bank and Vicinity levee system in New Orleans to meet projected future flood risks within the next half-decade.
“Morganza to the Gulf is a great example, location communities came together, they started funding it…so that protection is critical…It will constantly be maintained and constantly elevated to meet the new levels of threats and risks that are out there,” Hare said.
Coastal officials and researchers agree that what happens along Louisiana’s coast will continue to affect communities far beyond the shoreline for generations.
“And so maybe you don’t live behind the levee, but I promise you want those coastal communities to stay there and to keep working, and to stay productive and engaged…so that we don’t have to have these flood fights further north or lose parts of our economy,” Hare said.
Tornqvist said the decisions made now could shape the future of Louisiana communities.
“What’s really important to recognize is that the next few decades are basically going to decide the long-term future of cities like Baton Rouge,” Tornqvist said.
Louisiana has always lived with water. As the coast changes and sea levels rise, the challenge is how communities across south Louisiana continue adapting for generations to come.
From the Gulf Coast to Baton Rouge, the future of Louisiana’s coastline is a conversation that impacts the entire state.
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Louisiana ranks among the top 10 most affordable states to retire, according to a new study from Retirement Living, a national journal of retirement research.
Researchers analyzed each state’s housing costs, living expenses and tax friendliness to compile the ranking. Louisiana, they say, is the eighth most affordable state for retirees.
In Louisiana, the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $932, the median home sale price is $255,000, monthly grocery spend per capita is $272, the average price per gallon of regular gas is $4, the average Medicare Advantage monthly premium is $13.35 and the average effective property tax rate is 0.55%.
West Virginia is the most affordable state to retire, followed by Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, Indiana and Kansas. Researchers describe the South as “the sweet spot for an affordable retirement.”
The most expensive state to retire, meanwhile, is California, followed by Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Utah, New York and Minnesota.
Read Retirement Living’s full report here.
BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – With hurricane season approaching, the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority is bringing the community together to prepare before a storm forms.
“We can’t stop disasters from happening. We can’t stop hurricanes from happening. But what we can do is equip our communities with the resources that they need to prepare for these storms ahead of time,” said Jayda Morris, CPRA outreach manager.
The agency hosted an event featuring interactive storm simulations and a full model of the Mississippi River.
“If you do it now, like on a sunny day like today, you’re ready to go for the rest of the season,” Jay Grymes said.
El Niño may reduce storms, but Louisiana still at risk
State Climatologist Jay Grymes said an El Niño pattern may reduce the number of storms in the Atlantic but warned against a false sense of security.
“In those 25 years, Louisiana, some part of the state has been impacted by 29 storms. That’s one a year, regardless of El Niño. So that should tell you something,” Grymes said.
He said the bigger concern is storms that can form in the Gulf with little warning.
“If we’re going to get a storm, it very possibly could be one that bubbles up in the Gulf and doesn’t give us five or seven days to track it coming our way. It gives us 40 hours to get ready for a landfall. So it’s imperative that you go ahead and do it now,” Grymes said.
Preparation goes beyond stocking water
Preparing now includes walking through yards, checking trees, and knowing whether everyone in the family can survive two weeks without power.
PhD students with the LSU College of the Coast and Environment gave the community a virtual reality experience that puts users inside a storm.
“If they wear the goggles or play with the Apple Vision Pro, they can understand how high will the flood be, and they can know how dangerous is the hurricane scenario,” said Yixuan Wang.
The VR simulation uses real historical data to show users what compound flooding looks like in New Orleans and surrounding areas. The goal is to make the science real for people who can’t picture what a flood map means.
“It’s just to let you understand the environment. We will add the audios, the different sound of the wind and the storm. And you can see how tense of the rainfall around you,” Wang said.
Organizers said the event is about making sure that when a storm threatens the area, families already know their plan.
Information from the event is available on CPRA’s website. Hurricane season runs through Nov. 30.
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