Supreme Court justices spar over Louisiana’s effort to speed up elimination of majority-Black congressional district

(CNN) — The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for Louisiana to redraw a hotly contested congressional map that the court ruled days earlier was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, a highly technical decision that nevertheless sparked a bitter back-and-forth between three conservatives and a member of the court’s liberal wing.

The brief order dealt with a question about when the Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act took effect in Louisiana. The state is quickly gearing up to redraw its maps ahead of this year’s midterm elections and suspended its US House primaries following the high court’s ruling Wednesday.

More notable than the decision itself, which was widely expected, was the tension it exposed in brief writings by Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal.

Writing in dissent, Jackson said the post-decision “developments have a strong political undercurrent.” And she suggested that the court should have stayed on the sidelines “to avoid the appearance of partiality.”

“Not content to have decided the law,” Jackson wrote of the majority, “it now takes steps to influence its implementation.” The court’s decision to “buck our usual practice,” she added, ”is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map.”

Alito snapped back at Jackson’s dissent, describing her points as “trivial at best” and “baseless and insulting.”

“The dissent goes on to claim that our decision represents an unprincipled use of power,” Alito wrote in a brief concurrence joined by conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. “That is a ground­less and utterly irresponsible charge.”

Jackson was the only justice to note a dissent.

The rawness of the writing was surprising given what was ultimately at stake. Usually, the Supreme Court issues its “judgment” 32 days after handing down a decision. Once the judgment is issued, the lower court reclaims control of the case and can move forward – in this case, setting the next steps for Louisiana’s redistricting.

That brief delay gives time for a losing party to seek a rehearing, something that almost never happens. But the court’s rules also allow for the justices to expedite the issuing of the judgment, and that is the question the court has been grappling with since last week.

In a flurry of briefing following last week’s ruling, the state and two groups of voters who challenged various iterations of the map squared off over how quickly that decision would be finalized.

Hours after a 6-3 majority struck down Louisiana’s map, a group of White voters who initially challenged it filed an emergency appeal asking the court to speed up that process to give the state as much time as needed to redraw. A group of Black voters who defended the map opposed that proposal on Thursday, urging the court instead to hold off on finalizing its decision until the general election in November — a long-shot request.

In the middle of that back-and-forth, Louisiana itself filed a brief asserting that it did not matter how the Supreme Court handled the technical question of its “judgment” because state lawmakers were prepared to plow ahead with redrawing its districts. That new map, whenever it is finished, will almost certainly mean the state will have one less Black and Democratic member of Congress than it does currently.

The court’s opinion on Wednesday was clear, but it was silent about the next steps Louisiana should take as it stared down a May 16 primary election. Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, announced last week that the state was suspending the primary for House races so that it has time to redraw its maps.

The question of whether the Supreme Court had finalized its decision last week has also come up in separate litigation over Landry’s effort to push back election dates for House seats this year. Alito on Monday wrote that “the need for prompt action by this court is clear.”

“The congressional districting map enacted by the legislature has been held to be unconstitutional, and the general election will be held in just six months,” Alito wrote.

A lower federal court had found the state’s map unconstitutional in 2024. In May of that year, the Supreme Court blocked that lower court’s decision from taking effect while it considered the underlying legal questions. At that time, the Supreme Court said its short-term block would “remain in effect” until it issued its judgment in the case. Alito’s decision Monday means that judgment will now be issued, bypassing the usual monthlong pause.

Louisiana focused on another line in the Supreme Court’s temporary order from two years ago that said the block would “terminate automatically” if the lower court’s judgement was upheld. Because that happened, the state said, it felt it was in the clear to proceed without waiting for the judgment.

In an unusual move last week, the lower court outlined next steps before Alito decided what to do with the procedural questions.

That three-judge court said the state would be given an opportunity to redraw its map and ordered officials to explain what they would do within three days of the Supreme Court finalizing its decision. Now, with Alito’s brief order in hand, that clock will start ticking.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, Republican-led states have scrambled to figure out whether they could use the court’s opinion to boost the GOP’s gerrymandering effort.

In Tennessee, top Republican officials faced growing public calls to launch a special legislative session with the goal of removing the state’s only Democratic congressman. Republican pressure for redistricting is also building in other states, including Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

The-CNN-Wire
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