Nov. 4 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide the ongoing legal dispute over issues of race relating to Louisiana’s congressional district map.
The nation’s high court is expected to begin hearing oral arguments before the end of its current term in June.
However, the issue will have no impact on this year’s election.
The redistricting matter itself extends back a few years dating to the 2020 census over representation of Black voters in newly drawn congressional district maps.
Louisiana’s Republican-controlled legislature had overridden a veto by Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, over the state’s new congressional map.
In May, the supreme court in Washington cleared the way for Louisiana to use its current map with two majority-Black districts for this year’s election.
That came after state officials and voting rights advocates had made an emergency judicial request in efforts to finalize the state’s congressional district map in order to meet required legal deadlines.
Louisiana lawmakers approved in January a new congressional map to increase the number of majority-Black districts to represent the state’s population — which is nearly one-third Black.
That arrived after a 2022 Supreme Court ruling reinstated Louisiana’s Republican-drawn congressional map, which froze a lower court ruling that says the Republican map violated the Voting Rights Act.
It reset the map for the midterm election despite arguments it was racially biased and would dilute the power of Black voters.
The current map tilts districts to lean Republican in districts held by House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise.
Louisiana “should be ashamed” of using race in order to draw congressional district lines that “over-represents Black voters” which could result in the loss of GOP control in the House of Representatives in Washington, according to court filings on behalf of Phillip Callais and 11 other plaintiffs
But in court documents, the state’s Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga wrote that Louisiana is “stuck in an endless game of ping-pong” that needs a final solution.
“And the State is the ball, not a player,” he said, adding how without a final court ruling, “the state will be sued again no matter what it does.”
