Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s special legislative session turned out to be a massive success for him, save one goal – to reapportion the state’s Supreme Court. For that to happen during the regular session that starts next week, a little transactional politics may have to occur.
Currently, the seven districts suffer from severe malapportionment. Twice Landry, who has wanted this reapportionment for years, found that part of his 2024 special session calls thwarted by Senate Republican majorities.
The first try was somewhat rushed, provoked criticism from two sitting justices, and had the full Senate, which has a GOP supermajority, stall on it. The second attempt produced a somewhat better map that shifted the Second District, which will be open later this year, over to the east and down the Mississippi River that triggered somewhat less criticism for its rending of parishes (while still doing quite a bit of meandering and damaging, splitting Ouachita, Rapides, East Baton Rouge, and Lafayette Parishes), but GOP senators in committee torpedoed it.
During the first session, the effort became caught up in congressional reapportionment, where Republicans felt they had to surrender a seat to Democrats under judicial duress, and they were put off by being asked in the case of the Court to so the same, as the new Second would have become a majority-minority district highly favorable for Democrats. But the feeling lingered in the second, with the few House votes against it almost all coming from representatives in those parishes along with the panel rejection.
Importantly, nothing compels the state to do this. While a law suit exists trying to force this creation of another M/M, and it might cost the state a pretty penny to defend it, for it to succeed jurisprudence about judicial district apportionment would have to shift radically which seems highly unlikely. Without this threat, Republicans are reluctant to surrender a seat on the Court, especially when any plan to do so creates a map drawn primarily on the basis of race could bring its own constitutional problems.
But maybe they’ll bargain for it. One way could be to amend the Constitution to enable legislating into existence nine seats on the Court. That would take the sting out for Republicans somewhat in allowing a doubling of seats for Democrats by gaining one of their, as a nine-district arrangement would bring. Better, the overall map would be less gerrymandered by race. Bills to do this have been introduced.
However, since an amendment requires two-thirds legislative majorities, even a few GOP dissenters, unless Democrats want to sign on to this deal (and they haven’t in the past), would stymie this effort. Such a map still likely would divide Ouachita, Rapides, and East Baton Rouge which may raise objections.
It might take an extra or another incentive, coming from the political left. Also, for years now, Landry has wanted to dissolve the consent decree the state has operated under which imposes the M/M single-member Seventh District. Quite correctly, he argues that the state very well accepts this arrangement, and certainly the attempts to expand upon it demonstrate even more starkly the state’s intentions. Indeed, the state’s argument against continuing the decree, which will be heard by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later this year, in part argues its presence encourages the malapportionment.
Yet the defendants of the decree, who differ from those suing about the Court districts, resist its termination. Perhaps if they would relent, enough legislative Republicans might see their way to giving them and the plaintiffs of the other suit what they want, two M/M districts. Whether of seven or nine districts (the latter depending upon the people’s affirmative vote), everybody would get what they want.
Leftist special interests and politicians should make a deal along these lines. Otherwise, they almost certainly get nothing – no map change as the special sessions have shown and the decree might be terminated anyway by the judiciary – and cause taxpayers to pony up millions the sole output of which lines lawyers’ pockets.
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