Attorney General James Urges Supreme Court to Uphold States’ Authority to Redraw Congressional Maps

 

New York Attorney General Letitia James co-led a coalition of 20 attorneys general in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reaffirm that states have the constitutional right to redraw legislative maps in response to likely violations of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). In an amicus brief filed in Louisiana v. Callais, the coalition supports Louisiana’s right to enact a congressional map that includes two majority-Black districts after an earlier map was found to have violated the VRA. The attorneys general argue that the constitution gives state legislatures ample “breathing room” to enact legislative maps that address likely VRA violations.

“Voters should be empowered to pick their representatives, not the other way around,” said Attorney General James. “State legislatures have a constitutional right to redraw district maps when they are found to violate the Voting Rights Act and fail to fairly represent their communities. My office is co-leading this amicus brief to ensure that voters are always accurately and fairly represented at all levels of government.”

In 2022, a federal court in the Middle District of Louisiana found that the state’s congressional map likely diluted the votes of Black residents and thus violated Section 2 of the VRA. In response, to comply with the VRA, the Louisiana legislature enacted a new map in 2024 that added a second majority-Black district. Later, a different group of self-identified “non-African American voters” sued the state in the Western District of Louisiana, arguing that the 2024 remedial map with a second majority-Black district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Despite U.S. Supreme Court precedent allowing states to redistrict when there is a “good reason” to believe they must do so to comply with the VRA, the three-judge court in the Western District of Louisiana barred the state from using the 2024 VRA-compliant map, trapping Louisiana between competing court orders and undermining the state’s ability to craft legislative districts that comply with federal voting rights law. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the Western District of Louisiana’s constitutional ruling was correct.

The brief explains that the finding by a federal court that Louisiana’s existing map likely violated the VRA provided the state with a good reason to believe that its addition of a second majority-Black district was required to comply with the federal voting rights statute and thus did not violate the constitution. The brief also urges the Court to reject the arguments in an amicus brief filed by Alabama and 12 other states seeking to overturn long-standing interpretations of Section 2 of the VRA. Not only would it be inappropriate to address Alabama’s arguments in this case, but accepting those arguments would undermine states’ decades-long reliance on the Supreme Court’s settled interpretation of Section 2.

Joining Attorney General James in filing this amicus brief are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.