A surprising and faulty U.S. Supreme Court decision may force Louisiana to redraw its congressional map for 2024 – or might put the state in a position to act as a springboard for an entirely new challenge to making race the predominant factor in drawing electoral boundaries.
That predominance was strengthened by today’s decision in Allen v. Milligan, which concerned Alabama’s districts. Although six justices – those nominated by a Republican president – agreed that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act did not compel states to give race a privileged place in drawing lines, which Alabama argued in that the only real difference between its adopted plan that created only one majority-minority district out of seven whereas the population proportion would suggest two, Chief Justice John Roberts and Assoc. Justice Brett Kavanaugh essentially said because enough states had treated it as such over the years that it had earned that privilege.
In other words, apply a bad interpretation of the law long enough and it becomes sanitized. Specifically in this case, as long as district drawing doesn’t devolve into ridiculous shapes and running riot over other generally-accepted principles of reapportionment, race can have a privileged status over all others. Dissenting justices noted the perversity of an interpretation that grants precedent such power over intent and logic.
Louisiana has a pair of joined cases on hold to which this decision will apply, but perhaps not change the its current arrangement of districts where in a state with nearly a third of the population having significant black ancestry has only one M/M districts of six. That’s because in the Alabama case an alternative two M/M plan didn’t have its results running race that roughshod over other metrics such as separating communities of interest. By contrast, in the two Louisiana cases the alternative maps do more violation particularly to communities of interest and Louisiana itself doesn’t have the same history in trying to impose race as a dominant criterion after failing to do so in the 1990s – even among minority elected officials – weakening the value of precedent.
In other words, given the strengthened position of race-conscious apportionment, Louisiana will have to show any such solution still does enough violence to other criteria to reject that approach. But the challenges to its plan also could be defended in another way.
The Alabama case looked only at statute. In particular, Assoc. Justice Clarence Thomas has argued that the insertion of primarily race-conscious solutions to reapportionment violate the Constitution, specifically the 14th and 15th Amendments. Kavanaugh in his opinion noted the case didn’t address that argument, which he intimated he would be open to considering. If Louisiana has a lower court rule with the plaintiffs, it could appeal on this basis.
There’s also the matter of using the larger affirmative action lens in interpreting VRA Section 2, which later this month should receive greater clarity rulings about its use in college admissions. That is, the Court, having recognized using race as redress for past discrimination is a temporary thing, may conclude the clock has run out on affirmative action use with the change of objective conditions. Louisiana or others could argue that giving race primacy in reapportionment has run its course in its necessity in ensuring intentional discrimination against minorities in setting parameters for elections.
Still, the Court’s apparent endorsement, for now, of using race paradoxically to combat alleged racism should disturb Americans who believe their representation shouldn’t hinge on the immutable characteristic of their race.
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