The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Voting Rights Act may eventually cost Democrats some seats in Congress — but they’re determined to limit the damage this year.
Party activists raced back to court to try to shut down Louisiana’s effort to redraw its maps in time for November’s election.
And Democrats were also back at the Supreme Court, urging the justices not to speed up a case that could clear the way for Alabama to do a snap redistricting.
They said the election is too close, and indeed in some of the cases primary voting has already begun, for states to shut it down and take a mulligan.
“This court is asked to do something simple: stop a state from canceling an election that is already underway,” the Louisiana challengers said in their lawsuit, filed Thursday.
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday against Louisiana’s current map, which a lower court ordered drawn to give Black voters — and therefore Democrats — a majority in two of the state’s six districts. Under a previous map, the GOP held five of the six seats.
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In its decision, the high court said the lower court was wrong to find that the original 5-1 GOP split was discriminatory against Black voters under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
But in striking down the map, the justices didn’t say what should happen in the aftermath.
Even though tens of thousands of absentee ballots had already been mailed and some had been cast and returned in the party primaries, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, declared a state of emergency to halt voting.
A lower court, which had the original case, issued an order Thursday barring the state from using the 5-1 map.
Rep. Cleo Fields, D-La., center, who …
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“The State of Louisiana will be afforded the opportunity to enact a constitutionally compliant map consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion,” the three-judge panel wrote.
Attorney General Liz Murrill said the state is obligated to follow that ruling.
“The United States Supreme Court has spoken, and a three-judge federal court has already made clear that Louisiana cannot conduct congressional elections under its now-unconstitutional map. Louisiana is following the law,” she said Friday.
In Alabama, state officials said the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Voting Rights Act should clear the way for it to redraw its own lines in a more GOP-friendly fashion.
It asked the Supreme Court to quickly dispose of several pending cases over its maps and free the state up for a re-draw.
“Because the lower court’s injunction cannot stand in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, we have asked the court to lift the injunction. Alabama deserves the right to use its own maps, just like every other state,” Attorney General Steve Marshall said.
The National Redistricting Foundation, associated with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, begged the justices not to do it.
“After flailing at every level of the federal judicial system, Alabama seeks to short-circuit ordinary procedures while citizens are already casting their ballots,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation.
The state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also asked the justices not to speed through the cases.
