NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Data from the 2020 census shows that 56% of Louisiana's people identify as white, more than 31% as Black and nearly 7% Hispanic or Latino, yet only one of the state's six U.S. House members is Black.
Civil rights groups say that's an unfair and illegal imbalance that should be addressed in a special state legislative session that begins Tuesday evening at the state Capitol in Baton Rouge. State House and Senate seats also are at issue, with only about 25% of the Legislature’s seats held by minorities.
The session was called to redraw district lines for Congress, the Legislature, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Public Service Commission. Supreme Court districts may also be redrawn.
Changes in boundary lines are necessary because of population shifts reflected in the 2020 census. The boundary changes will inevitably affect balances of political power among geographical areas — north Louisiana has lost population to the south — as well as the trajectories of individual political careers.
“Every district is going to have to change, and every member needs to be expecting that change,” state Rep. John Stefanski, the GOP chairman of a key House committee said in a speech last year. “One of the other things that makes redistricting so difficult is it is extremely personal to every member.”
Despite the importance, and despite a looming deadline in the case of congressional seats — qualifying for the fall House elections opens in July — the task might not get done in the three weeks allotted.
Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards has added his voice to those calling for a second mostly Black congressional district. The governor could veto a plan that comes out of the Republican-dominated Legislature, which might be reluctant to carve out another minority-dominated district that would likely put a Democrat in Congress. Edwards isn't tipping his hand so far.
“I don’t really talk about vetoing instruments, leading into sessions as long as there’s an opportunity to try to work with the Legislature to get a bill on my desk that I won’t veto,” Edwards said recently on his monthly radio show. “But, obviously we have districts that are just patently unfair.”
Any conflicts that go unresolved could mean redistricting issues spill over into the regular legislative session that begins in March — or into the courts.
Civil rights groups are warning of lawsuits if they believe the redrawn districts don't comply with prohibitions on discriminatory voting practices and procedures in the federal Voting Rights Act. State House and Senate seats also are at issue, with only about 25% of the Legislature's seats held by minorities.
The groups can point to a recent ruling by three federal judges who blocked a new congressional map in Alabama that had only one mostly Black congressional district out of eight, in a state where the Black population is 27%.
Aside from political and legal questions, geography figures in the congressional remapping efforts. Louisiana's Black population is spread out around the state, posing challenges to gathering them together in two single districts.
“It’s easier to say than to do, because you don’t necessarily have the African American population situated where they can be connected and the maps actually make sense,” said Edwards. “But I believe if it can be done it should be done.”
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is among those who think it can be done. The organization has posted multiple proposed maps on a website run by the Center for Urban Research at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The maps show various ways geographically distant areas of Black population in north Louisiana and part of southeast Louisiana can be credibly linked into a second mostly Black district.
A possible complication: While the plans would result in two congressional districts where more than 50% of voting age people are Black, the Black voting age population in each of the two districts would have only a very thin majority.
Chris Kaiser, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, said civil rights organizations working together to get another minority district approved believe the districts proposed will meet legal requirements and benefit minority voters.
“There are very rigorous and thorough analyses that you have to do of historical election data to determine whether these districts are likely to actually support Black-preferred candidates or minority-preferred candidates,” Kaiser said, referring to the process needed to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
That analysis has been done, Kaiser said. “With the voting age population that are reflected in each of these maps, we are highly confident they would end up supporting the Black-preferred candidate.”
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