Louisiana is asking the Supreme Court to gut the central provision of the Voting Rights Act and ban any use of race in redistricting.
In a legal brief filed Wednesday, the state urged the court to overturn a landmark 1986 ruling that established a legal test for when a voting map illegally dilutes minorities’ voter power. That ruling, Thornburg v. Gingles, has been understood for decades to require that states with significant communities of minority voters draw districts that fairly reflect their voting power.
“Race-based redistricting is fundamentally contrary to our Constitution,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, and other state attorneys wrote.
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Louisiana also told the Supreme Court it has made the unusual decision not to defend the state’s current congressional map. That map contains two majority-Black districts among the state’s six House seats. The state said it had adopted that map only after being “coerced” by federal courts supervising the state’s compliance with the Voting Rights Act.
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Louisiana argues that such “race-based redistricting” is unconstitutional because it “violates fundamental equal protection principles.”
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Louisiana’s arguments heavily lean on Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a 2023 decision in which the conservative majority struck down race-conscious admissions and effectively ended race-based affirmative action in higher education.
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