By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday declined to clear the way for a judge to hold a hearing to choose a new electoral map for Louisiana that includes a second majority-Black congressional district, more than a year after she ruled that a Republican-drawn map unlawfully diluted the clout of Black voters.
The justices rejected requests by challengers to the map passed by the state’s Republican-led legislature to lift a federal appeals court’s order that halted U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick from proceeding on a replacement map of Louisiana’s six U.S. House of Representatives districts.
No justice publicly dissented from the decision, which could postpone a remedy for Dick’s June 2022 decision that the map likely violates the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 law that bars racial discrimination in voting.
In addition to the action at the Supreme Court, litigation in the Louisiana dispute continues at the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin has appealed Dick’s preliminary injunction.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a brief opinion concurring in Thursday’s decision, said that because the state has said the legislature will not consider drafting a new map that complies with the VRA while litigation is pending, “the district court will presumably resume the remedial process while the Fifth Circuit considers the state’s appeal.”
Dick’s preliminary injunction had directed Louisiana’s legislature to create two House districts, rather than just one, where Black voters would represent the majority of voters, a decision that could boost Democratic chances of regaining control of the House in next year’s congressional elections.
The Supreme Court in June ruled in a similar case against a Republican-drawn map in Alabama that a lower court had concluded unlawfully curbed Black voters from electing a candidate of their choice.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
