Louisiana asks Supreme Court to uphold redistricting decision | National politics

Attorney General Liz Murrill asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to stay a court panel’s April 30 order rejecting a map drawn by the Legislature this year that included two of Louisiana’s six seats in the U.S.’s majority-black voting districts House of Representatives.

If that doesn’t happen, Murrill said, the state will be forced to use the map it used in the last election, where there was only one majority-black district.

The state argued that the Supreme Court needed to clarify the differing interpretations of the Voting Rights Act that left the state without agreed-upon districts from which to elect the six representatives for now.

The panel’s orders must be suspended until May 15 to give Secretary of State Nancy Landry time to conduct the Nov. 4 election, Murrill argued in her appeal. If that doesn’t happen, she wrote, the state will have no choice but to use the map used in 2022, which resulted in Louisiana’s current House delegation consisting of five white Republicans and one Black Democrat.

The three-judge panel that struck down the map was appointed by the chief judge of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Two of the three justices were appointed by President Donald Trump; the third was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

The panel ruled 2-1, with the two Trump-appointed justices in the majority, that the two-black district map did not meet constitutional requirements. The justices said race was at the forefront when creating the new map and that the map did not adequately consider other factors such as compactness and communities of interest.

In defending the map with two majority-black counties, Louisiana officials said race was far from the only factor. They said the new map also had political considerations at play, saying it was intended to protect certain Republican districts — including those of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Benton; House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson; and Rep. Julia Letlow, R-Start — and to punish Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge. Over the past year, Graves has clashed with several powerful figures in the state Republican Party, including Scalise and new Gov. Jeff Landry, who called the Legislature into session in January to draw the new map.