Attorney General Liz Murrill on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to suspend a judicial panel’s April 30 order rejecting a map drawn by the Legislature this year that gave two of Louisiana's six seats in the U.S. House of Representatives majority-Black voting districts.
If that doesn't happen, Murrill said the state will be forced to use the map it used in the last election, which has only one majority-Black district.
The state argued that the high court needs to sort out the differing interpretations of the Voting Rights Act, which have for now left the state without agreed-upon districts from which to elect the six representatives.
The panel’s orders must be stayed by May 15 to allow time for Secretary of State Nancy Landry to stage the Nov. 4 election, Murrill argued in her appeal. If they are not, she wrote, the state will have no choice but to use the map used in 2022, which resulted in Louisiana's present House delegation of five White Republicans and one Black Democrat.
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{span}Attorney General Liz Murrill{/span}
The three-judge panel that threw out the map was appointed by the chief judge of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Two of the three judges were appointed by President Donald Trump; the third was appointed by President Bill Clinton.
The panel ruled 2-1, with the two Trump-appointed judges in the majority, that the map with two Black districts did not pass constitutional muster. The judges said that race was the primary consideration in drawing 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 districts, Louisiana officials said race was far from the only factor. They said the new map also has political considerations in play, saying it was designed 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 last year, Graves got crosswise with several powerful figures in the state GOP, including Scalise and new Gov. Jeff Landry, who called the Legislature into session to draw the new map in January.