Maybe Republican former Sen. David Vitter was right, and if Louisiana causes one momentum-shifting constitutional case outcome, it might get caught up with another that would cause changes in its state legislature just as politically consequential.
Any day now the U.S. Supreme Court could rule on Callais v. Louisiana, which could declare that reapportionment of legislative districts becomes too race-conscious if drawing maps to reflect roughly a proportion of a jurisdiction’s minority population onto its proportion of majority-minority seats of that minority. That would mean for Louisiana’s congressional map its Legislature could draw a plan that favors the election of five Republicans and one Democrat, as opposed to the current map that has produced two Democrats.
Such a decision would leave current legislative maps with slight Republican supermajorities in stasis. Nairne v. Landry currently challenges the two chamber maps but using the same logic contested in Callais. If the Court rules as expected to negate the use of race in such an intrusive fashion, the complaint in Nairne vanishes.
