Republican AGs seek to use Louisiana redistricting case to weaken Voting Rights Act

Fourteen Republican attorneys general argue that a federal judge’s interpretation of the Voting Rights Act in a ruling that overturned Louisiana’s legislative maps was unconstitutional.

The attorneys general, led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, stated their case in an amicus brief filed Wednesday in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans for the case Nairne v. Ardoin.

“States deserve fair notice regarding how to draft redistricting laws that comply with federal law,” the brief reads. “Yet under the District Court’s free-wheeling approach, members of the Louisiana Legislature could never guess ahead of time what facts might — in a court’s view — trigger a (Voting Rights Act) violation and thus might justify presumptively unconstitutional race-based districting.”

Jared Evans, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that represents Black Louisianians in redistricting lawsuits, said the attorneys general, several of whom are defending their own states from Voting Rights Act lawsuits, are trying to turn Louisiana’s legislative redistricting lawsuit into test case to weaken the landmark civil rights legislation.

Their case focuses on Section 2 of the act, which prohibits voting laws or procedures that purposefully discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group.

“They know that if Section 2 is upheld, there are a lot of states that need to have additional minority Black districts in their house maps, but also in the congressional map, in the state school board maps and all of the other political boundaries,” Evans said in an interview. “Every case that is going to get under Section 2 going forward with the Supreme Court is a test case to see if they can further poke holes in Section 2 jurisprudence.”

In February, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District of Louisiana ruled in Nairne v. Ardoin that maps Louisiana lawmakers drew two years ago to update the boundaries of their own districts do not give Black voters a fair opportunity to elect their own representatives. Plaintiffs in the case are Black voters who challenged then-Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, Louisiana’s top elections official.

In her ruling, Dick, a federal court appointee of former President Barack Obama, gave the state a “reasonable period of time” to approve new legislative districts that do not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Dick did not specify in her ruling what a reasonable period of time is or the number of majority Black districts necessary to comply with the Voting Rights Act. Plaintiffs have said the state should add six in the Louisiana House and three in its Senate. Currently, 28 out of 105 House seats are majority Black, as are 11 of 39 Senate seats.

In the months since the ruling, Republicans have ramped up their efforts to weaken key parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Building off a 2023 ruling in the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis that only the federal government can seek an enforcement ruling under the Voting Rights Act, Republican attorneys general and voting officials have sought to intervene in lawsuits brought by voters, such as Nairne v. Ardoin.

In April, Louisiana filed a brief in the case asking the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to hear an appeal on the basis that there is no private right of action under the Voting Rights Act. That means that voters would not have the legal standing to sue over their rights being violated.

The court denied the state a hearing before the full court, but litigation is still ongoing before a three-judge panel in the 5th Circuit.

The 8th Circuit’s ruling is not legally sound, Evans argued.

“Section 2 has been upheld and private groups have been allowed to bring cases since the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized 1984, and so this is another attempt to weaken the Voting Rights Act,” Evans said .

Much of the 14 attorney general’s brief relies on a footnote in Dick’s ruling.

On the 84th page of the 91-page document, Dick writes the following in a footnote: “Dr. Washington pointed out the subliminal message of the Sheriff’s Office being housed on the same floor as her Registrar of Voter’s Office.”

The footnote references a government building in an unnamed parish where the sheriff and the registrar are headquartered on the same floor, which Alice Washington, a Black voter in Louisiana, cited as evidence of voter suppression.

The 14 attorneys general mocked this idea at several points in their brief:

“The Voting Rights Act is concerned with the right to register, vote, and participate in politics — win or lose — not on whispers from parish buildings.”

“Perhaps if those walls could literally talk, the District Court’s interpretation would not be ‘hopelessly indeterminate,’” the brief continues

“… But bad vibes cannot be the test for vote dilution,” the attorneys general also wrote.

Evans pushed back on their arguments.

“Given the history that minorities have with law enforcement and over-policing and police brutality, having to register at the same place where law enforcement is housed is a form of voter suppression and intimidation,” Evans said.

“I’m not sure what they’re trying to brag about or what they’re trying to imply,” he added.

Marshall, Alabama’s attorney general, was joined in the brief by his counterparts in Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who is a defendant in Nairne v. Aucoin and did not join the brief, declined to provide a comment for this report.

At a status report in June, legislative leaders told Dick they did not have immediate plans to draw new state House and Senate maps.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and X.