Republican lawmakers — joined by a lone Democrat and three independents — successfully overturned Gov. John Bel Edwards’ veto of the controversial congressional district maps passed by the state legislature last month, forcing into law a redistricting proposal civil rights groups claim violate federal law.
The debate over congressional redistricting in Louisiana has boiled down to one key question: Does Louisiana with its six congressional districts and one-third Black population require a second majority-Black district to adequately represent the census-reported increase in minority population.
Civil rights groups, Democratic state lawmakers and Edwards have argued that the current configuration with one majority-Black district is unfair and illegal.
But the change would have all but guaranteed that Republicans lose a seat in Congress, and at every turn, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature rebuffed efforts to create the second majority-Black district.
During last months’ once-in-a-decade redistricting session, they pushed through two identical congressional redistricting proposals that maintained the status quo. Edwards vetoed both earlier this month.
With Wednesday’s votes, state lawmakers forced HB1, the congressional map proposal sponsored by House Speaker Clay Schexnayder into law, and made history by executing the state’s first successful veto override since 1993 and only the third override of a gubernatorial veto in state history.
But the legislature is unlikely to have the final word in Louisiana’s redistricting debate. The state’s congressional maps are the subject of two pending lawsuits filed by civil rights groups, who argue that the proposed congressional map violates Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits the dilution of minority racial groups’ political power through the redistricting process.
“The legislature once again voted in favor of a map that violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and undermines the will of thousands of Louisianans who made their voices heard throughout the process demanding fair maps and respect for Black Louisianans,” Victoria Wenger, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund said.
Wenger and her organization have already filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the maps in state district court. She said Wednesday’s vote was a “pivot point” in the ongoing legal battle and her organization has pledged to file a federal lawsuit in the coming days.
Gov. John Bel Edwards said he was disappointed by the vote, but not surprised.
This was the first redistricting effort Louisiana has undertaken since a U.S. Supreme Court decision gutted provisions of the Voting Rights Act that required the state to “pre-clear” its new maps with the U.S. Department of Justice. Edwards said that allowed for unacceptable partisan and racial gerrymandering.
“Unfortunately, this demonstrates that the state of Louisiana, even in 2022, is not ready to come out from some sort of supervision,” Edwards said. “That’s tragic and it didn’t have to be this way.”
The measure was brought up for consideration first in the House, where Republicans do not control a two-thirds majority required to override the veto on a strictly party line vote.
The House voted 72-31 to override Edwards’ veto — just two votes more than the two-thirds of the chamber required for an override. Republican legislative leaders secured the votes of Democrat Francis Thompson (D-Delhi) and unaffiliated representatives Roy Daryl Adams (I-Jackson), Joe Marino (I-Gretna) and Malinda White (I-Bogalusa).
Republicans celebrated the House vote with whoops and cheers, then crossed to watch the vote in the Senate. The mood was far more somber in the Senate, where several Black state Senators rose to voice their opposition to the override attempt.
Sen. Karen Carter Peterson (D-New Orleans) drew a direct throughline from the enslavement of her ancestors to the systemic disenfranchisement that prompted the 1965 Voting Rights Act and ultimately Wednesday’s override vote.
“I don't feel human today,” Peterson said. ”I don't feel seen. I don't feel equal.”
Sen. Sharon Hewitt (R-Slidell) reiterated her belief that the Voting Rights Act and Louisiana’s demographics do not necessarily require the state to have two majority-Black congressional districts. She further argued that the state’s one-third Black population was too dispersed to sustain two majority-Black congressional districts that would reliably elect Black-preferred candidates — a claim Democrats and civil rights groups have disputed.
“Unfortunately, this is not something that you can do based on emotion, we have to follow the federal and the state laws,” Hewitt said. “I hear again and again that a third of our population is Black — I hear that — but it does matter where people live.”
The Senate clinched the historic override with a 27-11 vote along party lines.
In a press conference after the vote, Sen. Cleo Fields and other members of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus reflected on their frustrations with the redistricting process in which Republicans repeatedly rejected several maps with two majority-Black districts that were more compact, and split fewer parishes and voting precincts.
“We had the best plan. But they ignored it, didn't even give it a chance to go to the floor,” Fields said. “We had to put it on the floor by way of an amendment.”
Fields, who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1993 and remains one of only five Black Louisianans to ever serve in Congress, said the map the GOP forced into law Wednesday never would have secured pre-clearance from the Department of Justice. He called on the U.S. Senate to pass voting rights legislation that would re-implement the practice for states like Louisiana.
Rep. Royce Duplessis (D-New Orleans) looked ahead to the impending legal battle.
“The Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 because states like Louisiana couldn’t get it together,” Duplessis said. “And here it is, 2022, and the state of Louisiana still can’t get it together,” Duplessis said. “We can do better, and we must do better. It shouldn’t take a federal court to tell us what’s right.”
