Federal lawsuit filed to overturn Louisiana’s new congressional district map 

A group of 12 plaintiffs is suing Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry over the state’s new congressional district map, alleging the map violates civil rights protected by the 14th and 15th amendments.  

In the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, the plaintiffs allege that, in their special redistricting session, lawmakers aimed to segregate Louisiana voters based “entirely on their races and create two majority-African American voting districts and four majority non-African American districts, without regard for any traditional redistricting criteria.”  

Each of the plaintiffs is identified as a “non-African American voter” in the filing. Eight of them saw their voting districts change as a result of the redistricting. Among the group is Rolfe McCollister, the retired founder of Business Report, a current opinion columnist for the magazine and chairman emeritus of Business Report’s parent company Melara Enterprises.

The case has been assigned to Judge David C. Joseph. 

Political analysts predicted there would be legal challenges to the new map after Senate Bill 8 was passed Jan. 19 by the Louisiana Legislature. In interviews over the past few weeks, U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, who saw his district dissolved by the new map, has alluded to his doubts that the map would stand in court.     

“SB8’s sponsors and many other lawmakers expressly stated their intent was to maximize the voting strength of African American voters by stripping them from their communities in far-flung regions of Louisiana and consolidating them into two districts that stretched hundreds of miles in length and dwindled to less than a mile in width,” the filing reads. “In doing so, the State engaged in textbook racial gerrymandering and violated the U.S. Constitution.”