The Advocate: Mark Ballard: Voting rights advocates may get exactly what they want

BY MARK BALLARD | Staff writer |Jun 30, 2023

This story is only for subscribers like you, Louisiana. We appreciate your support.

WASHINGTON — By any measure, the news out of the nation's capital last week was good for Louisiana voting rights advocates.

Peter Robins-Brown, executive director of Louisiana Progress, said he did a bit of a jig. Southern University Professor Albert Samuels, who has studied civil rights for decades, also said he broke into his happy dance.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court returned to Louisiana a case challenging the Legislature’s mapping of congressional districts in a way that ensured five White Republicans and one Black Democrat would be elected to the U.S. House, even though 33% of the state’s population identifies as African American.

Then on Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that state courts can negate the actions of state legislatures when it comes to election rules and the drawing of congressional districts. That was a loss for the Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly, which refused a court order to redraw congressional districts that better reflect its state's population, claiming that legislators are the final arbiter on elections. 

Former President Barack Obama, who rarely weighs in on court rulings, said the high court delivered “a resounding rejection of the far-right theory that has been peddled by election deniers and extremists seeking to undermine our democracy.”

Taken together, the two Supreme Court decisions mean Louisiana will soon have the possibility of electing two minority congressional representatives instead of one, Robins-Brown said. “The Legislature's whole plan has now officially failed. I don’t see how it doesn’t end with Judge Dick just picking a map.”

Last June, Chief U.S. District Court Judge Shelly D. Dick, of Baton Rouge, ruled that the Louisiana Legislature’s map was gerrymandered to favor White Republicans. She ordered legislators to draw a map that created a second district with enough minority voters to give a Black candidate a fighting chance of winning a seat in Congress.

Lawmakers grumbled, took testimony on a map presented by former congressman and Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields, then decided the Republican maps were good enough.

The GOP majority essentially put all the Black voters they could into a single district that stretches from New Orleans East up the Mississippi River into north Baton Rouge. About 61% of voters in that 2nd Congressional District, represented by Democratic Rep. Troy Carter, are Black, according to data from the Louisiana Secretary of State. 

Lawmakers then dispersed the state's remaining Black voters into districts packed with White voters who have elected five White Republicans to the U.S. House for more than a decade.

The registered White voters account for 79% of voters in House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s 1st Louisiana Congressional District, which covers suburban New Orleans; 71% in Rep. Clay Higgins’ 3rd District for Acadiana; 61% of Rep. Mike Johnson’s northwest Louisiana 4th District; 64% of Rep. Julia Letlow’s 5th Congressional District, which covers northeast Louisiana as well as much of the central part of the state and the top parts of the Florida parishes; and 71% of Rep. Garret Graves’ 6th District, which is based in south Baton Rouge and its suburbs.

All the maps in play that create a second minority-majority district have much smaller Black majorities than Carter’s 2nd District does now.

Depending on which map is chosen, the Black voter majorities will hover around 52% for both Carter’s 2nd District and Letlow’s 5th District.

Elections wouldn’t be as easy for Carter. But Letlow would be facing seasoned Black politicians and their church-based support system, which for years has been fenced off from federal offices because of how congressional district lines were drawn, Samuels said.

Officials such as Fields, Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, or U.S. Small Business Regional Administrator and former legislator Ted James would have a reasonable chance of being elected to Congress. And if the new majority-minority district also includes Monroe, another Black power base that so far has been limited to local politics would have an avenue onto the national scene.

That dynamic also means that if candidates from the same base are in the same election, neither will garner enough votes to make a runoff and thereby open the way to again elect a White Republican, Samuels predicted.

“The plaintiffs made a very smart argument about history, population patterns as it applies to the law,” Samuels said. “What the plaintiffs didn’t think about and what I’ve kept telling them, is to be careful what you wish for.”