As Republicans in Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and Texas discuss potentially redrawing their legislative maps to give themselves an even stronger partisan advantage, Louisiana lawmakers have declined to join in, at least so far.
No one wants a repeat of the congressional map debates from this year’s session, which went deep into the night with accusations of racism and backroom deals and inspired death threats against legislators.
And with GOP supermajorities in both chambers, it’s not clear how much additional partisan advantage there is to be had, or whether the effort would be worth the political risk for members currently occupying safe Republican seats.
But there’s no question that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Callais decision tees up potential threats to majority-minority districts, not just in the Legislature, but on other state and local bodies across Louisiana.
“I am of the belief that all of these [minority] seats are under threat,” says Rep. Edmond Jordan, who chairs the Legislative Black Caucus. “I think you’d be naive to think otherwise.”
Put simply, the high court’s majority in Callais ruled that sorting voters by race is unconstitutional, even when done to comply with the Voting Rights Act, and stated that VRA plaintiffs should have to prove deliberate racial discrimination. The court also restated its inability (or unwillingness) to stop partisan gerrymandering, and reaffirmed the validity of drawing districts to protect incumbents.
So what does all that mean in a state like Louisiana, where race and partisan affiliation are closely correlated, in that the vast majority of Republican voters and officials are white while most Democrats are Black? The definitive answer to that question will be answered in various courts over time, but Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and former White House voting rights policy adviser, predicted the federal courts will not stop Louisiana Republicans from redistricting to eliminate any Democratic districts they want to get rid of.
“That’s certainly their thinking, that they can use party as a proxy for race and that will be sufficient for them to overcome a challenge,” Jordan says. “We’ll see how that works out.”
Following the Callais decision, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated its previous ruling that the Louisiana Legislature’s districts violate the Voting Rights Act. With no court forcing their hand, the Republican chairs of the legislative committees that would take the lead on redistricting say there are no plans to address their map before the next census in 2030.
Obviously, when you eliminate a Democratic district, those voters have to go somewhere, potentially making a solidly conservative jurisdiction more competitive. Senate and Governmental Affairs Chair Caleb Kleinpeter says he doesn’t see much point in trying to redistrict the Legislature early when Republicans already have two supermajorities.
“I don’t see that there’s an appetite for it after this year,” Kleinpeter says, referring to the congressional map fight. “This year was a rough year.”
He says Senate District 29, a majority-minority district currently represented by a term-limited white Democrat, Sen. Jay Luneau, could be turned into a Republican seat without jeopardizing the GOP’s prospects in other districts. But trying to get more aggressive could backfire, and it hardly seems worth it to redistrict to gain one seat.
He also notes that while only a few current senators have reached their term limit, a much larger group will be termed out after the next election (assuming they win). So waiting until 2031 to redistrict may make more sense politically, if only to avoid messing with the districts of colleagues who plan to run for reelection.
Along with congressional lines and their own districts, legislators control the maps for the Public Service Commission, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Louisiana Supreme Court and other state courts. Local bodies generally control their own maps.
If nothing else, Callais brought a definitive end to proportionality in redistricting; that is, the notion that the proportion of minority districts should match the proportion of the minority population, says Dannie Garrett, a Baton Rouge-based attorney who does redistricting work for local governments. While proportionality was not actually the legal standard pre-Callais, the new decision makes that clear.
His advice to (for example) school board members drawing a new map that they hope will survive a court challenge is to avoid paying too much attention to racial demographics. If they want to drill down into population data, they can focus on political affiliation, which is what the Legislature did when creating the new congressional map, he says.
It also helps if a district can pass the proverbial eye test.
“I try to tell people districts should look more like shapes and less like insects,” Garrett says.
While there has not yet been a post-Callais wave of legal challenges in Louisiana to majority-minority districts established under previous interpretations of the Voting Rights Act, minority voting rights activists are bracing for impact.
“We are preparing to fight,” says Michael McClanahan, president of the NAACP’s Louisiana State Conference and one of the plaintiffs in Robinson v. Landry, the predecessor to Louisiana v. Callais. “Every seat, every elected position that came up under those conditions, pre-Callais, can be attacked.”
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
