Maybe Louisiana’s legislative Democrats should have taken the deal when they had the chance.
Last regular session, prior to release of any data from the 2020 census, legislative Republicans put forward a constitutional amendment that would have increased the size of the Louisiana Supreme Court from seven to nine members, mandated decennial reapportionment, and done so for this cycle on an equiproportional basis. Almost a quarter century has passed since the last reapportionment, leading to districts of vastly different populations, of which only one has a black majority meaning an almost-certain seat in the hands of Democrats.
In contrast to representative organs, law and judicature doesn’t require one-man-one-vote and reapportionment every decade with elected judges because they serve in an adjudicatory institution. As a result, Louisiana has no requirement to redraw the current boundaries – and the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote to do so – even if it means in a state with about a third of its population racially identifying as black the map at present has just the one minority-majority district.
The GOP deal would have changed all that and from the perspective of Democrats improve their fortunes. While possible with seven districts to draw just a single M/M one to within a ten percent range around the mean number of residents – as the reapportionment special session currently ongoing demonstrates with Republican state Sen. Sharon Hewitt’s SB 15, fulfilling a party pledge to tackle malapportionment in the Court’s districts – nine districts would have required at least two M/M districts.
In essence, the 2021 bill would have locked in, barring unusual demographic and voting behavior changes, two of nine seats for Democrats for decades to come, as opposed to setting in stone, again barring unusual events, them having one of seven, because the Legislature doesn’t have to reapportion the Court and it takes a supermajority to do so anyway, with Democrats very much on the short end of that stick for the foreseeable future. As a bonus, it would have created more individual elected office opportunities, which Democrats prize.
They turned it down. Then comprising a third of the House of Representatives, Democrats mustered just enough votes enough times to keep the legislation from passing there, perhaps gambling they could force through a plan with two M/M districts of the current seven (such as on the back of a Hail Mary suit filed years ago that would require a miraculous change of heart by the U.S. Supreme Court). Now that action looks to come back to haunt them.
Hewitt’s bill seems poised to fly through a GOP-dominated committee and to sail though the Senate, where the GOP has a supermajority. But the party comes up two votes short of that in the House, so (assuming total party unity) unless it can convince at least a pair of the three no party representatives – who typically vote more often with Democrats – to get on board, the measure will fail.
No matter. There’s no legal urgency to reapportioning the Court, and with six of seven seats currently favorable to their candidates even if malapportioned, Republicans are no worse off with the bill not passing. Democrats are left with a Hobson’s choice – stop the bill and they remain at one of seven malapportioned seats in their favor; accept it and they still have just one of seven although roughly equiproportional in district sizes. Nor does the bill mandate decennial reapportionment to give them future shots at change.
Democrats now belatedly have offered up an amendment to go to nine members, but it’s too little, too late and will go nowhere. In essence, they rejected two of nine in the hopes of two of seven and will get stuck with one of seven. Sometimes you need to take the bird in the hand and forget about the two in the bush.
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