SCOTUS Hears Major Redistricting Case

The outcome of a high-profile Supreme Court case concerning Louisiana’s congressional map—known as Louisiana v. Callais—could have an impact on the balance of power in Congress.

Currently, Republicans maintain a razor-thin majority over Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The congressional seat at the heart of the litigation is currently held by Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.).

The legal issue of the Oct. 15 hearing was whether the creation of a second black-majority congressional district in the Pelican State violated the 14th or 15th Amendments.

The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law. The 15th Amendment forbids the federal government and the states from interfering with voting rights based on a citizen’s race.

A federal district judge ruled that an earlier version of the state’s electoral map, which included only one black-majority congressional district, discriminated against black voters, who constitute almost one-third of the state’s population. 

The judge ordered the state to create a second black-majority district after finding that its failure to do so likely violated Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Section 2 prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate based on race, color, or membership in a large minority group such as American Indian, Asian American, Alaskan Native, or American Hispanic.

Courts have held that the Voting Rights Act sometimes allows states to take race into account when drawing electoral boundaries, but electoral maps drawn explicitly based on race are unconstitutional. 

The statute has also been interpreted by the courts to forbid redistricting when it dilutes minority voting power.

A group of non-black voters sued, arguing that the map discriminated against non-minorities by engaging “in explicit, racial segregation of voters.”

During the 2 1/2 hour hearing, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the Supreme Court has ruled in various cases that “race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes for a long period of time—decades, in some cases—but that they should not be indefinite and should have an endpoint.”

Justice Samuel Alito said it is unconstitutional for race to be used as a “proxy for partisan affiliation.”

Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Agui­­ñaga said the current system involves “racial stereotyping” and “has no logical endpoint.”

“If anything is clear in this court’s dedication to eliminating all racial discrimination, it is that the Constitution does not tolerate this system of government-mandated racial balancing,” Aguiñaga said.

At the same time, some justices on the nation’s highest court pushed back against the idea that discarding the use of race in drawing electoral districts was necessary.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said “race is a part of redistricting always.”

“My colleagues are trying to tease it out in this intellectual way that doesn’t deal with the fact that race is used to help people,” she said.

Legislators might use a race-based approach to try to keep an ethnic community intact in one district, or to decide which district an incumbent should be placed in, Sotomayor said.

—Matthew Vadum; Stacy Robinson

BOOKMARKS

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston of California has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from performing mass layoffs of federal employees during the shutdown. Her order came shortly after Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said the administration planned to get rid of more than 10,000 workers.

A three-day operation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Oklahoma resulted in the arrest of 120 illegal immigrants, authorities announced this week. Dozens of those arrested had commercial driver’s licenses. 

Five new measles cases have popped up in South Carolina, authorities said on Wednesday, but an ongoing quarantine is helping contain the outbreak. The new cases all showed up in individuals who had been previously exposed and were in quarantine at home.

Democrat governors of 14 states—and Guam—have announced the formation of The Governors Public Health Alliance, which aims to provide an alternative voice to the Department of Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “We can no longer rely on the information coming out of Washington, D.C., but our states are coming together to unequivocally state that science still matters,” Washington state Gov. Bob Ferguson said in a statement.

What do you know about Antifa, the far-left activist group that was recently designated a domestic terror organization? The Epoch Times’ Janice Hisle will fill you in with her latest report.

—Stacy Robinson