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Supreme Court Revives Republican-drawn Voting Map of Louisiana

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court on Tuesday restore congressional voting map in Louisiana that a federal judge said dilutes the power of Black voters.

Three liberal members of the court disagreed.

The Supreme Court’s brief order, which did not include a reason, blocked the judge’s order and issued a petition to review the case. The judges, the order said, will keep the case in Louisiana while the court decides a similar one from Alabama in its next term.

The Louisiana dispute is part of a bitter battle over redistricting raging across the country. Civil rights leaders and some Democrats say the redistricting process often works to the detriment of developing minority communities. Republican officials say the Constitution allows only a limited role in considering race in attracting constituencies.

Louisiana has six congressional districts, and about a third of the population is Black. According to a measure in the 2020 census, the state’s Black population grew 3.8% over the last decade, while the white population fell 6.3%.

After the census, the State Legislature, controlled by the Republican party, issued a voting map with a single county in which Black voters were in the majority. Governor John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, a Democrat, vetoed the map in March, saying it was “simply unfair to the people of Louisiana.” The Legislature denied the governor’s veto.

Civil rights groups and voters in the state sued to challenge the map.

Judge Shelly D. Dick of the Federal District Court in Baton Rouge found that the map violated the Voting Rights Act by cornering Black voters in one county and then splitting the rest out into five other counties. Judge Dick, appointed by President Barack Obama, ordered the Legislature to produce a revised map.

The unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused to comply with Judge Dick’s order while proceeding with the appeal, though it said her opinion “was not there is no weakness”. Unsigned comments were joined by Judge Jerry E. Smithappointed by President Ronald Reagan; Judge Stephen A. Higginson, appointed by Mr. Obama; and Judge Don R. Willettappointed by President Donald J. Trump.

Another panel of appeals court was scheduled to hear arguments in the case on July 8.

In the Alabama case, judges in February temporarily blocked a voting map that would have added a second congressional district in which Black voters had a majority in that state. The court is set up to hear arguments in the case, Merrill and Milliganwhen the judges return to the bench in October.

In previous decisions, the Supreme Court effective bowel movements Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required federal approval of changes to state and local voting laws in parts of the country with a history of racial discrimination, and cuts on Section 2 of the law, limiting the ability of minorities to challenge voting restrictions.

The cases from Louisiana and Alabama are also related to Part 2, but in the context of a redistricting.

Section 2 prohibits any voting procedure that “results in the denial or shortening of the right to vote of any citizen of the United States on account of race.” That so it, the provision continued, where “based on the totality of circumstances” ethnic minorities “have less opportunity than other members of the constituency to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice.”

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