The ruling came after Louisiana delayed May 16 primary elections to give it time to replace the unconstitutional map the court struck down last week.
The U.S. Supreme Court late on May 4 took the unusual step of making its recent ruling to limit the use of race in redistricting effective ahead of the usual 32-day waiting period.
The new procedural ruling allows the high court’s landmark April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais to take effect immediately. In that case, the court struck down as unconstitutional a congressional map for Louisiana that included a second black-majority district.
There are fewer than 32 days between April 29 and the first U.S. House primary elections that were scheduled for May 16, so if the waiting period were not waived, the primaries would have had to take place using the very same map the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court’s new move might undermine challenges to an April 30 decision by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, to postpone the state’s U.S. House primary elections and seek a new electoral map that complies with the U.S. Constitution. The first primary had been scheduled for May 16, with a second set for June 27.
Earlier, a federal district judge ruled that a version of the electoral map, which included one black-majority congressional district, discriminated against black voters who constitute almost one-third of the state’s population. She ordered the state to create a second black-majority district, and the state Legislature complied.
Non-black voters sued, arguing that the new map discriminated against non-minorities by engaging “in explicit, racial segregation of voters.”
Three judges on a federal district court panel agreed and ruled the map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that disfavored non-black voters. Gerrymandering is the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to favor a particular party or constituency.
Last week, the Supreme Court affirmed the panel, ruling that race may only be a minor factor in redistricting rationales and not the predominant, overriding reason for how congressional district lines are drawn.
Federal courts have been applying the Supreme Court precedents on the federal Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 non-discrimination provisions “in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids,” the court said.
In the Supreme Court’s new, unsigned opinion, the justices said the clerk of the court “ordinarily waits 32 days after the entry of the Court’s judgment to send the opinion and a certified copy of the judgment to the clerk of the lower court.”
Here, the non-minority voters who filed the original lawsuit asked the court to issue the judgment immediately so that “in the event of a judicial remedy,” the district court will be in a position to “oversee an orderly process.”
