State AG says we will head to U.S. Supreme Court this week over congressional map

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Attorney General Liz Murrill took to social media saying at a time when concerns about election integrity are higher than ever, the recent ruling by 3 federal judges threatens the ability of the Secretary of State’s Office to conduct a stable and fair election in November.

A panel of federal judges Tuesday threw out a congressional map that contained a court-mandated two majority-black districts and said the state legislature must pass a new map by June 3rd or the judges would draw one themselves. But that’s 26 days after the Secretary of State’s Office said they need a map in order to properly conduct elections this November.

“The Legislature decided on the map months ago, I mean we went into a special session. And so that’s where I stand, the map that we sent onward was the map that we agreed upon,” said state Sen. Regina Barrow (D-Baton Rouge).

Voting rights advocates, the Attorney General, and Governor Landry say they’ll defend the current map all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Louisiana lawmakers say with all the bills they have left to go through, on top of trying to get a constitutional convention in motion by the end of the month, it would be impossible to get a map approved in time.

“And because of the process, we have to file bills by a certain time in order to move through the process and that time prescription is over,” Sen. Barrow confirmed.

Each lawmaker we spoke with, whether on camera or off, said the same thing. They’ve been tasked with the impossible and are guessing it will ultimately be up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I’ve seen the same news reports that you’ve seen. And it’s my appreciation that the way we operate inside this body is that we have to be called into a session to do that. And I also don’t believe we have any instruments that are rolling through the legislature right now to be able to tack that on,” said state Rep. Charles Owen (R-Rosepine).

Two of the three judges who tossed out the newest map with two majority-black districts said that the map violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because “race was the predominate factor” driving its creation. While they ordered a new map to be drawn, they did not specify if it should contain a second majority-black district or not. The candidate sign-up period for the November congressional election is in mid-July.

“Obviously the court ruling from the Western District has caused a lot of confusion and I think this will boil down to one of two things. I think the United States Supreme Court will ultimately have to weigh in or a special master will have to draw the maps. But at the end of the day the legislature has spoken, we have created two minority districts, and we feel the maps are constitutional,” echoed state Rep. Jason Hughes.

The panel of judges has also given any other interested parties until May 17th to submit their map proposals. We reached out to the secretary of state’s office for comment, but they declined.

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