Republican AGs Want to Use Louisiana Redistricting Case to Weaken Voting Rights Act • Louisiana Illuminator

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Fourteen Republican attorneys general are arguing that a federal judge’s interpretation of the Voting Rights Act in a ruling that overturned Louisiana’s legislative layout was unconstitutional.

The Attorneys General, headed by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, laid out their case in an amicus curiae brief filed Wednesday with the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans for the case Nairne vs Ardoin.

“States deserve honest consideration about how to craft redistricting laws that comply with federal law,” the short “But under the district court’s permissive approach, members of the Louisiana Legislature could never have predicted in advance what facts — in the court’s view — would constitute a (Voting Rights Act) violation and thus presumptively justify unconstitutional districting based on race.”

Jared Evans, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who represents black Louisiana residents in district redistricting lawsuits, said the state attorneys general, several of whom are defending their own states against lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act, are trying to turn the Louisiana district redistricting lawsuit into a test case to weaken the state’s historic civil rights law.

Their case focuses on Section 2 of the law, which prohibits voting laws or procedures that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a linguistic minority group.

“They know that if Section 2 is upheld, there are a lot of states that are going to have to have additional black minority districts in their House maps, but also in their congressional maps, in their state school board maps, and all the other political boundaries,” Evans said in an interview. “Every case that comes to the Supreme Court under Section 2 is a test case to see if they can poke more holes in the jurisprudence of Section 2.”

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In February, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District of Louisiana ruled in Nairne vs Ardoin that maps that Louisiana lawmakers drew two years ago to update the boundaries of their own districts don’t give black voters a fair chance to elect their own representatives. The plaintiffs in the case are Black voters who challenged then-Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, Louisiana’s top election official.

In her ruling, Dick, a federal court judge appointed by former President Barack Obama, to give the state a “reasonable period of time” to approve new voting districts that do not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Dick did not specify in her ruling what constitutes a reasonable period of time or how many majority-black districts are needed to comply with the Voting Rights Act. Plaintiffs have said the state should add six to the Louisiana House of Representatives and three to the Senate. Currently, 28 of the 105 seats in the House of Representatives are majority-black, as are 11 of the 39 seats in the Senate.

In the months following the ruling, Republicans have stepped up their efforts to weaken key parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Building a US verdict in 2023 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Based in St. Louis, only the federal government can seek an enforcement order under the Voting Rights Act, Republican attorneys general and voting officials have sought to intervene in lawsuits brought by voters, such as Nairne vs Ardoin.

In April, Louisiana filed a brief in the case, asking the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to hear an appeal on the basis that there is no private right of action under the Voting Rights Act. That means voters would not have the legal standing to sue over violations of their rights.

The district court denied the state a hearing before the full court, but the lawsuit remains pending before a three-judge panel in the 5th Circuit.

The 8th Circuit’s ruling is legally invalid, Evans argued.

“Section 2 has been upheld and private groups have been able to bring lawsuits since the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized in 1984, and so this is another attempt to weaken the Voting Rights Act,” Evans said..

Many of the 14 Attorney General’s Summary is based on a footnote in Dick’s statement.

On page 84 of the 91-page document, Dick writes the following in a footnote: “Dr. Washington pointed out the subliminal message that the Sheriff’s Office is housed on the same floor as its Registrar of Voter’s Office.”

The footnote refers to a government building in an unnamed parish where the sheriff and clerk have their headquarters on the same floor. Alice Washington, a black voter in Louisiana, cited this as evidence of voter suppression.

The 14 attorneys general ridiculed this idea at various points in their plea:

“The Voting Rights Act is about the right to register, vote and participate in politics — win or lose — not based on whispers from parish halls.”

“If those walls could literally talk, perhaps the court’s interpretation would not be ‘hopelessly indefinite,’” the report continues.

“…But bad vibes cannot be the test for vote dilution,” the attorneys general also wrote.

Evans resisted their arguments.

“Given the history that minorities have with law enforcement, over-policing and police brutality, having to register in the same place where law enforcement is housed is a form of voter suppression and intimidation,” Evans said.

“I’m not sure what they’re trying to brag about or what they’re trying to imply,” he added.

Marshall, the Alabama attorney general, was joined in his letter by his colleagues from Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who is a suspect in Nairne vs Aucoin and did not participate in the report, declined to comment on this report.

In June, House leaders told Dick in a status report that they had no immediate plans to draw new maps for the House and Senate.

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