Civil rights groups expected to file lawsuit over Louisiana’s new legislative maps

Civil rights groups are expected to file at least one lawsuit in federal court early next week over new political maps for the Louisiana Senate and House that would go into effect for the 2023 election cycle.

Neither map increases the number of majority-Black seats in the Louisiana Legislature, which civil rights organizations believe violates the federal voting rights law. 

Gov. John Bel Edwards announced Wednesday night he would not veto the maps, clearing the way for court challenges.

Though he didn’t reject them, the Democratic governor emphasized that he found both maps problematic because neither increased the number majority-Black districts in the statehouse.

For the first time in his six years in office, Edwards allowed bills to become law without proactively signing them. In doing so, he stopped short of blocking the maps from taking effect but also refused to endorse them.

“The Legislature should be focused on the issues in the upcoming session and not concerned about what their districts will look like in the 2023 elections,” Edwards said in a statement, explaining why he didn’t veto the maps. 

The governor’s decision left some Legislative Black Caucus members frustrated. The Louisiana Senate and House maps are often more personal for legislators than other maps because the political lines affect them directly. 

Some Black Democrats also believe the Louisiana House and Senate lines present the strongest case for overturning maps through the court system, more so than the U.S. House map that Edwards vetoed Wednesday. 

“Obviously I am profoundly and deeply disappointed,” by the governor’s decision not to veto the maps, said Rep. Cedric Glover. The Black Democrat from Shreveport fought unsuccessfully to add another majority-Black district to the new House plan during last month’s special session on political redistricting.

The House and Senate maps maintain the same number of majority-Black seats put in place a decade ago: 11 of 39 Senate seats and 29 of 105 House members would remain majority-Black in the new maps – equal to about 28% of each chamber.

Black Democrats and civil rights groups believe the number of majority-Black districts should  be higher, given that Black residents make up 33% of Louisiana’s population. They believe the case for throwing out the Louisiana House map might be particularly strong, especially because the House’s own staff said an additional majority-Black seat should have been added to the Shreveport area over a decade ago.

“It is my opinion that the failure to create another opportunity [for a majority-Black district]  in Caddo Parish is going to put us at risk,” for not getting the map approved by the U.S. Department of Justice, Louisiana House Clerk “Alfred” Butch Speer said during a legislative hearing in March 2011, when Louisiana was last drawing political maps.

Speer, now retired, was the House’s point person to provide legal advice on redistricting at the time, but lawmakers didn’t take up his suggestion.

Instead of drawing a House map with 30 majority-Black seats, the 2011 Legislature constructed a map with 29 majority-Black seats. The proposal didn’t run into problems with the U.S. Department of Justice either, as Speer had warned it might, but the map also wasn’t tested through a lawsuit as it will be this year. 

Speer’s comments could be relevant to the coming legal challenge over the House map. Glover’s proposals to add an additional House seat during the 2022 legislative session mirrored those Speer had backed a decade ago.

The additional seat in Caddo Parish will likely be part of any legal challenge.