Editorial: Fairness requires a second Black-majority House district in Louisiana

Louisiana and a handful of other southern states have tried for decades to gut, if not overturn, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by challenging the act’s applicability to their racially gerrymandered congressional maps. So far, even the most conservative U.S. Supreme Court in memory refuses to grant their wish.

In fact, the harder some states try to overturn the act, the more they demonstrate why Congress passed it in the first place.

Earlier this month, in a case with profound implications for Louisiana, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 opinion rejecting Alabama’s congressional districting plan — and affirming the constitutionality, applicability and importance of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

In doing so, the court applied its earlier decisions prohibiting states from minimizing minority voters’ ability to elect their preferred candidates. Now Alabama must draw a second majority-Black district.

And that’s where Alabama’s case hits home in Louisiana.

Days later, the court voted 6-3 to lift a stay order, or “pause,” it issued a year ago in a lawsuit challenging Louisiana’s new congressional districts. That stay order was issued pending the court’s decision in the Alabama case, because both cases presented similar issues.

For example, Louisiana has six House districts but only one that is majority Black, even though Louisiana’s voting-age population is roughly 31% Black.

Similarly, Alabama has seven House districts and only one with a Black majority, despite a voting-age population that is slightly less than 27% Black.

Now that the Louisiana case is back in play, it goes first to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in New Orleans and hears cases appealed from federal trial courts in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

This week, the 5th Circuit ordered attorneys for the litigants — the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and several other voting rights groups on one side, and Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin on the other — to file briefs discussing the impact of the Alabama case on Louisiana’s districting plan.

Given Alabama’s and Louisiana’s similar population profiles, some already predict victory for Black plaintiffs in this state. Others caution that it’s too early to celebrate.

While we feel that fundamental fairness, if not the law, weighs in favor of a second majority-Black district in Louisiana, we note that predicting the judicial decisions is a fool’s errand.

The Alabama case, in fact, is a case in point. Almost no one thought the Supreme Court’s new 6-3 conservative majority would let the Voting Rights Act stand once it agreed to hear Alabama’s appeal — especially after that same majority overturned Roe v. Wade’s half-century of abortion rights last year.

Yet, here we are, wondering if Louisiana will find a way around the high court’s surprising Alabama decision.

Procedurally, the Louisiana case is in a sort of limbo. The 5th Circuit could decide the case itself based on arguments presented to it and to trial Judge Shelly Dick in Baton Rouge, who ruled last year that Louisiana’s new congressional districts were racially gerrymandered in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

Or the appellate judges could send the case back to Judge Dick for a full-blown trial that would create an even larger record on appeal.

No matter what the 5th Circuit or Judge Dick may decide, the case is bound to be appealed again — and that will take time. Hopefully, not too much time.

It’s worth noting that, in lifting the stay it imposed last year, the Supreme Court expressly noted that its order “will allow the matter to proceed … in advance of the 2024 congressional elections in Louisiana.”