Supreme Court issues new emergency voting rights ruling that boosts GOP

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court The May 4 vote allowed the early passage of a recent resolution limiting a key part of the Voting Rights Act, increasing the chances that Republicans could impose a new congressional map on Louisiana before the November election.

The court traditionally stays decisions for a month after decisions are reached to give the losing party time to request another hearing.

Voters who won the case wanted the transfer to take place without a waiting period to allow more time for new maps to be drawn.

Black voters, fearful of lack of representation in Congress, opposed the request and argued that because voting had already begun in the primary, the justices should instead hold their April 29 decision until after the election.

The court’s response to the emergency request was unsigned, but Justice Samuel Alito, who concurred, wrote that Louisiana should not have to use a map found to be unconstitutional. He suggested there was still time for the state legislature to adopt a new map.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, in dissent, said the court’s decisions “created chaos” in Louisiana.

On April 30, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry suspended the May primary elections, giving the state legislature time to approve a new map that would allow Republicans to gain one or two seats.

This restraining order is also being challenged in court.

A different court must decide how the Supreme Court’s decision invalidating the current map will be implemented. In order for these judges to do this, the Supreme Court must send them its decision, which makes the decision final.

Judges generally do not finalize a decision until the losing party has exhausted the time allotted to them to request a retrial. Rehearsal requests are rarely granted.

In the Supreme Court opinion, the majority said Black voters who lost the case “did not intend to ask this Court to reconsider its decision.”

“And it is clear that this Court must act immediately,” Alito wrote.

Jackson, one of the court’s three liberals, said the court appeared to tip the partisan scale by shortening the normal waiting period over objections from Black voters.

“To avoid the appearance of bias here, we may choose to remain on the sidelines as usual and not take any positions, following our default procedures,” Jackson wrote. “But today the Court chooses the opposite.”

State officials told the Supreme Court it didn’t matter to them how quickly the justices moved. Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill wrote that the timeline would not affect the state’s ability to create a new map and election process for this year’s elections.

Once that happens, he said, there will be no need for the lower court to get involved.

The map, which an ideologically divided Supreme Court rejected 6-3, includes two majority-black districts. A group of self-identified Black voters filed a lawsuit arguing that the “racial quota” cost the state Republican seats in the narrowly divided Congress.

More: The Supreme Court weighs in on redistricting. Will it affect the national struggle?

The districts were created to protect the voting power of the state’s Black residents, who make up one-third of the state’s population.

But Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court majority, called the map an “unconstitutional gerrymander” that violated the rights of non-Black voters who opposed it.

Alito said the Voting Rights Act’s vote dilution protections for racial minorities do not come into play when a map “fails to provide a sufficient number of majority-minority districts.” Instead, he said, there must be evidence that district boundaries were created because of “intentional discrimination.”

The decision poses the risk that majority-black districts in Louisiana, as well as majority-minority districts in other states, will be eliminated in the redrawing.

This article first appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court issues new emergency voting rights decision that boosts GOP