Federal judge: Louisiana House, Senate voting maps weaken Black votes, break law

Bonnie Bolden
·6 min read
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BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — A federal judge ruled that the Louisiana voting maps for the Senate and House of Representatives violate the Voting Rights Act. The maps “dilute Black voting strength.”

On Thursday, Feb. 8, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick ordered the state to redistrict the voting maps. The deadline has not yet been set.

Several Black Louisiana residents and nonprofits filed the suit in 2022 on behalf of voters. the remaining plaintiffs are: Dr. Dorothy Nairne, Reverend Clee Earnest Lowe, Dr. Alice Washington, Steven Harris, Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute and the Louisiana State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

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They argued that cracked and packed legislative districts kept them from having an equal opportunity to elect the candidate they wanted.

Cracking divides a voting population through multiple districts. It forces voters into minority roles, making it less likely they can elect the candidate they want. Packing overly distributes a group into a district to ensure the candidate wins by a wide margin. This overall limits the other party’s power.

Defendants included: then Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, then President of the Louisiana State Senate Patrick Page Cortez, then Speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives Clay Schexnayder and then Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.

Both sides presented their arguments at a 2023 trial.

Dick said a preponderance of evidence showed that the maps crack or pack large minority populations into some districts. The plaintiffs, she said, showed that a plan that meets federal requirements can be reasonably designed.

Census data shows racial changes

William S. Cooper, who specializes in redistricting, demographics, and population data, provided an example plan. The plan showed that three more majority-Black districts could be created for the Senate. It also showed that six more could be created for the House.

The current maps have 11 majority-Black Senate districts and 29 majority-Black House districts.

U.S. Census data in 2000, Louisiana had about 32.86% Black residents, and that increased to 33.13% in 2020. According to the judge’s recap, in 2000, 60.33% of Louisiana residents were non-Hispanic white. In 2020, this was 55.75%.

Among voting-age residents, in 2020, non-Hispanic whites were 58.31%, a decrease from 65.51% in 2000. Black voting-age residents were 31.25% of the total in 2020, up from 29.95% in 2000.

Cooper noted that the white population decreased in six of the state’s nine metro areas over 20 years. In eight of the nine, the Black population increased.

The Baton Rouge metropolitan statistical area had a significant increase in the Black population, just over 60,000 people. He said it amounted to about two House districts.

Dick noted that the data he presented was not disputed by the state.

In her ruling, she said the plaintiffs’ argument is premature. They claim the state would need to use “aggressive racial gerrymandering” to make the proposed maps. Dick said that Cooper’s plan was illustrative and does “not carry the force of law and is not state action.”

Cooper’s example maps show the state could add to the Senate:

  • District 17, which would cover Baton Rouge.

  • District 28, which would cover Shreveport and Bossier City.

  • District 19, which would cover New Orleans.

His graphics also showed that the state could add:

  • Districts 60, 65 and 68, which would cover the Baton Rouge.

  • District 1, which would cover Shreveport and Bossier City.

  • District 23, which would cover the Natchitoches area and Shreveport-Bossier City MSA.

  • District 38, which would cover Lake Charles.

Dick said she credited Cooper’s testimony. The currently adopted map improperly distributes Black votes in Senate Districts 5, 7, 8, 10, 15, 19, and 39. She said House Districts 2, 4, 5, 7, 13, 22, 25, 29, 34, 35, 37, 60, 61, 63, 65, 68, 69 and 70 do the same.

State argues against the example maps

The defendants argued that the illustrative maps don’t distribute voters properly.

Sean Trende, a witness brought by the defense argued that the example plan creates a false sense of compactness.

Dick said he used a flawed algorithm called “moment of inertia.” This algorithm hasn’t been used in other redistricting cases, nor his own research. Another statistical model he referenced, Dick said, also was not peer-reviewed.

“Trende’s “moment of inertia” methodology also fails to consider communities of interest and traditional boundaries. Most glaringly it ignores the legislature’s mandate of equal populations among districts,” Dick wrote.

Alan Murray, a geography professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, also spoke as a witness for the defendants.

Dick said she rejects his opinions. She noted that he confused the concepts of the number of parishes split by a map and “unique parish/district combinations.” She said there was no supporting data or graphics to show how he reached some of his conclusions. The combination determined his findings were unreliable.

She said he used several methods to consider the example maps. Ultimately, he acknowledged the “illustrative plans are on average as compact as or more compact than the corresponding [enacted] plans.”

She said Cooper used standard, appropriate tools to build the proposed maps. They show that changes can reasonably be made.

Michael Barber, an associate professor of political science at Brigham Young University and the director for the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, presented data on maps. He made 100,000 Sentate simulations without using race as a factor. He said race-neutral criteria don’t explain Cooper’s districting.

Dick pointed out that in a recent case on Alabama’s voting maps, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments that computer-generated, race-neutral maps should be the standard for proposed maps in redistricting cases. The court said the cases need to hinge on the effect of discrimination. They should not focus on the intent of discriminating.

Defendants argued that Cooper aimed to create maps with a disproportionately large number of majority-Black urban districts. The judge said Cooper’s intent in this case doesn’t matter because it’s not the same as the state’s intent.

Alan Johnson, an expert witness in political science and redistricting, argued that majority-Black House and Senate districts have grown more than the increase in the population of voting-age Black voters.

Dick noted that he didn’t analyze the population proportion. He also didn’t consider the decline of white voting-age residents over the same period.

She said he also used an argument about blurred census data at the block level. He didn’t say how broad the margin of error could be. He also didn’t say how the proposed maps’ use of data is different from any other experts’.

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