Judges reject Louisiana con­gres­sion­al map that would have giv­en state new major­i­ty-black dis­trict

A bat­tle in the Supreme Court appears like­ly after three fed­er­al judges reject­ed Louisiana’s new con­gres­sion­al dis­trict map that gave the state a sec­ond major­i­ty-black House dis­trict.
The three-judge pan­el ruled 2–1 on Tues­day that the state can­not use the vot­ing dis­trict map that was drawn up in Jan­u­ary. The judges agreed with the plain­tiffs, who claimed that the map con­sti­tut­ed racial ger­ry­man­der­ing and thus vio­lat­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion.
“The pre­dom­i­nate role of race in the State’s deci­sions is reflect­ed in the state­ments of leg­isla­tive deci­sion-mak­ers, the divi­sion of cities and parish­es along racial lines, the unusu­al shape of the dis­trict, and the evi­dence that the con­tours of the dis­trict were drawn to absorb suf­fi­cient num­bers of Black-major­i­ty neigh­bor­hoods to achieve the goal of a func­tion­ing major­i­ty-Black dis­trict,” U.S. Dis­trict Judges David Joseph and Robert Sum­mer­hays wrote in the major­i­ty opin­ion.
Both judges are appointees o …