As has so often been the case with the governorship of Democrat John Bel Edwards, wrong again, yet again on reapportionment.
Edwards’ native pomposity and arrogance came out when he commented on his becoming the first governor in the state’s history to have a veto overridden from a regular session in a veto session. HB 648 prohibits (from the start of next year) surgical or chemical sex alterations of minors, and similar bills the highest court to date to have dealt with these has ruled that, because of demonstrated irreversible adverse effects these have on individuals that haven’t developed emotionally or intellectually enough to decide about these, states do show a sufficient burden of proof to be able to regulate such medical interventions.
About the override he said, “The first time I was overridden, on the Congressional district map, I said the bill was illegal and I expected the courts would throw it out. The courts have done so …. I expect the courts to throw out this unconstitutional bill, as well.”
Of course, that’s not accurate. No rulings have come about on the state’s congressional map, although it is expected that a Louisiana-based district court will reject this arrangement after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Allen v. Milligan that said race should have a preferred position among traditional reapportionment criteria, and remanded a case back to an Alabama-based district court to rule on that state’s plan on that basis, although that court allowed the Alabama Legislature to reapportion in light of the ruling.
It did, but not in the way special interests that cheered the ruling wanted. Last week, the Alabama Legislature produced a plan, in a state with 27 percent population of individuals who claim at least some black ancestry, that retained just one majority-minority district out of seven that reduced its proportion of blacks slightly from the enacted plan to just over 50 percent, while pumping up the black proportion of another district from 31 to about 40 percent.
Such a map isn’t that different from the one approved by Louisiana, overriding the Edwards veto from a special session, which has a M/M district at around 60 percent and two others at about 35 percent black population out of six. Other potential plans could have increased the Fourth District to over 40 percent while reducing the M/M Second a few points, but any decision about maps now lies in the hands of the judiciary, which may draw its own if it is convinced the Louisiana map doesn’t comply with the recent Court ruling.
However, nothing in that ruling requires near-proportionality in mapping, only that race may have a preferred but not predominant place in reapportionment. The Court majority formulated the standard because it understood the minefield it would enter otherwise, admitting that proportionality/predominance would violate not just the explicit wording of the Voting Rights Act as renewed, but also opened up the entire VRA to a constitutional challenge it surely would lose as a proportionality and predominance unequivocally violate equal protection.
Alabama’s action pushes the limits to see just how fine the hair-splitting can get. In the parlance of reapportionment, it wants to see what the standards are for creating an “opportunity district” – of which M/M districts are a subset – where a cohesive black voting bloc has a probable chance of electing a candidate of its choice in alliance with non-blacks. The ruling must admit opportunity districts as permissible or else it steps on a mine of proportionality.
And the special interests who applauded the Court’s ruling know this. This is why their reaction to Alabama’s new map is one of accusations, they allege, that accepting such a map “guts” the VRA, if not invalidates it through a constitutional challenge.
Which means insofar as Louisiana goes, its current map is alive and well, even if in the future the Middle District court that at one point seemed poised to throw out that map eventually does so and draws it own. If that map has two M/M districts – and compared to Alabama’s case, this would have a stronger presumption of race as the predominant criteria because it could draw just two narrowly-M/M districts and create more violations of traditional principles in the process – the state can sue to stop that on that basis.
As previously, it probably will be towed behind Alabama, who if in August the court there throws out the new plan it will take that step, likely arguing in a suit not only that its plan meets justiciable standards of the Court ruling – which addressed only what it claims the VRA means, not its constitutionality – and the future imposed plan does not, but also building the groundwork for a future constitutional challenge if eventually the Court doesn’t decide that way.
Special interest proponents know the day is coming, with the Court already backed into a corner on this with nowhere to go to save race as a predominant consideration in reapportionment, where race will have to come back to the field as a criterion for reapportionment equal to several others, as long as adherents to the idea that any claim of preferred treatment on the basis of race is unconstitutional press the issue. The drawn-out legal battle now proceeding makes unlikely that Louisiana will have to change its present map before the 2024 election, or that it need make changes to its legislative districts any time soon – and exposes again Edwards as a buffoon driven by ideology.
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