Louisiana's congressional map returns to Supreme Court to face review

Washington — The Supreme Court is set to consider Monday whether to leave in place Louisiana's congressional map that includes two majority-Black districts and was used in the 2024 elections.

The dispute is the latest involving claims of racial gerrymandering and the drawing of political districts to land before the high court following the re-crafting of voting boundaries after the decennial census. In this case, the plaintiffs, who identify themselves as non-African American Louisiana residents, say the state relied too heavily on race when drawing a second majority-Black district for the state's congressional map.

The Supreme Court has in recent years weakened the Voting Rights Act, starting with the landmark 2013 decision that gutted the law's preclearance requirement. Before that decision, certain states and localities — mostly Southern — with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices were required to submit changes in election law to the Justice Department for approval before they could be implemented. The court ruled that the formula used by the Voting Rights Act to determine what states and localities were subject to Section 5 was unconstitutional because it was based on electoral conditions in the 1960s and 1970s, rather than on contemporary circumstances, and thus imposed unequal burdens on some states without sufficient justifying evidence.