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Supreme Court lets Louisiana use congressional map with new majority-Black district in 2024 elections
Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will allow Louisiana to use for the 2024 elections a congressional map that includes a second district where the majority of voters are Black, giving them the opportunity to elect their favored candidate.
The justices granted two separate requests — one from a group of Black voters and civil rights groups and the second from the state of Louisiana — to put on hold a decision from a three-judge federal district court panel that blocked Louisiana from using the newly redrawn map in any upcoming election.
The district lines were crafted and approved by the GOP-led legislature in January after federal courts rejected an initial congressional map adopted in March 2022 for likely violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
The court appeared split along ideological lines. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said they would deny the requests for a stay. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, writing that she would have let a remedial process before the district court play out before considering whether emergency intervention was warranted.
The Supreme Court’s decision is a victory for Democrats, who are likely to pick up another seat in Louisiana under the recrafted congressional lines. It is also the latest development in a long-running legal battle over the state’s House district boundaries that began after the 2020 Census, which kicked off the redistricting process.
Louisiana’s congressional map
The first map adopted by Republican state lawmakers in 2022 consisted of five majority-White congressional districts and one majority-Black district, though roughly one-third of the state’s population is Black. The group of Black voters and civil rights groups challenged that plan’s legality, arguing it diluted the voting strength of Black residents in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick agreed with the challengers and issued an injunction blocking the state from conducting any elections under the 2022-drawn lines. She then gave state lawmakers the opportunity to come up with a new map that included an additional majority-minority congressional district.
While proceedings in the case continued, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Black voters who challenged the congressional voting lines in Alabama and upheld a lower court decision that found that map likely violated Section 2.
On the heels of that decision, the high court cleared the way for Louisiana to move forward with redrawing its congressional map as ordered by Dick. A federal appeals court later gave state lawmakers until Jan. 15, 2024, to adopt the new redistricting plan that included the second majority-Black district.
Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican who took office in January, convened a special session of the state legislature to craft the new voting boundaries, and the map with the two majority-Black districts was adopted that month.
Michael Johnson / AP
The new congressional redistricting plan aimed to protect certain Republican incumbents, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Rep. Julia Letlow, at the expense of Republican Rep. Garret Graves, according to court filings. Graves, who represents the 6th Congressional District, had supported Landry’s GOP opponent in the gubernatorial race and did not publicly back Scalise’s run for House speaker last year.
Under the map, the reconfigured District 6, drawn to create the additional majority-minority district, stretches from Shreveport in the northwest corner of Louisiana to Baton Rouge in the southeast. It connects predominantly Black populations from Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge.
Shortly after the new map was signed by the governor, a group of 12 voters, who describe themselves as “non-African-American,” challenged it as a racial gerrymander in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. They claimed the state drew its six congressional districts predominantly based on race and created the two majority-Black districts “without regard for any traditional redistricting criteria.”
But those who back the new redistricting plan, including the Black voters and civil rights groups involved in the challenge to the initial 2022 map and Republican officials, have argued that lawmakers sought to comply with Section 2 — as required by Dick’s order — while also working to accomplish their political goals.
Still, the three-judge district court panel issued a divided decision last month that blocked the latest GOP-drawn congressional map from being used in any election after finding it to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The two judges in the majority, Judges David Joseph and Robert Summerhays, agreed that race was the predominant factor that drove the state’s decision-making when crafting the boundaries of the second majority-Black district, District 6. They declined to weigh in on whether it is feasible to craft a second majority-Black district that would comply with the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, but added that “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act never requires race to predominate in drawing congressional districts at the sacrifice of traditional districting principles.”
The civil rights groups, Black voters and state Republican officials asked the Supreme Court to put the panel’s ruling on hold and allow it to use the new map for upcoming elections. While the lower court judges had set an early-June deadline for voting lines to be redrawn, the state argued it needed to know by May 15 which map to use in the November congressional elections.
In their bid for emergency relief from the justices, the voters and civil rights organizations said the panel’s divided ruling “deprives the legislature of the flexibility needed to remedy an identified VRA violation in accordance with its own policy priorities.” They said it would be “incongruous” if purposefully creating an additional majority-minority district to remedy a violation of Section 2 constituted impermissible racial gerrymandering.
“In the district court’s view, and contrary to this court’s precedents, once the legislature concluded that it must consider race to comply with the VRA, any other considerations that entered its redistricting calculus were necessarily subordinate to race. That is reversible error,” lawyers for the voters and groups said.
In their request for emergency relief, Louisiana officials lamented that just days before Secretary of State Nancy Landry needs to start implementing a congressional map for the 2024 elections, “Louisiana has no congressional map.”
“Louisiana’s impossible situation in this redistricting cycle would be comical if it were not so serious,” they wrote in their filing to the justices.
The Republican state officials warned that the upcoming contests risk being thrown into disarray amid the competing court orders, which pit the Voting Rights Act rulings, which required the adoption of a second majority-Black district, against the panel’s April decision, which found that doing so violated the Equal Protection Clause.
“This absurd situation is an affront to Louisiana, its voters, and democracy itself. The madness must end,” they wrote.
But the group of 12 voters challenging the January map accused Louisiana of imposing a “brutal racial gerrymander” on them and millions of other voters and called the redistricting plan adopted earlier this year “morally repugnant.”
“Plain and simple, race as the first criterion the legislature considered, and it was the criterion that could not be compromised,” they wrote in a filing to the Supreme Court, citing comments from state lawmakers about the need to draw a second majority-minority district to remedy the likely Voting Rights Act violation.
They also accused the state of manufacturing the May 15 deadline to have a congressional map in place, which the lawyers said is not based on a state law, rule or regulation.
“The state makes much of its interest in avoiding chaos and protecting the electoral process. But in fact, allowing SB8 to go into effect, despite the district court’s final order determining that it is unconstitutional, would only dismantle confidence in the integrity of the electoral process,” lawyers for the 12 voters who challenged the January map wrote.
They said that a stay from the Supreme Court, which would allow the newly drawn district lines to be used for the upcoming elections, risks voter confusion and disruption for the 2024 primary.
Throughout Election Day and night, CBS News’ Confirmed team will be fact checking reports of threats around voting today, voter fraud, election hacking, and more as the nation votes and waits to see whether Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States., CBS News’ full coverage of the election is here.
False: Elon Musk claimed Google intentionally manipulating search results in favor of Harris
X owner Elon Musk posted, then deleted, a screen recording comparing the Google searches. The post reached over 2.5 million views before its removal, with other posts garnering thousands of views.
Details: Google said searches for “where to vote for Harris” yielded a polling location map because Harris is also the name of a county in Texas, not because of bias for the Democratic candidate.
Searching for “where to vote for Trump” returned news articles and standard search results, while “where to vote for Vance” produced a similar polling locations map because Vance is the name of a county in North Carolina.
Google adjusted its algorithm Tuesday to prevent candidate-related queries from returning polling maps. Google trends data show that searching “where to vote” is a much more common query than searching where to vote for either Trump or Harris.
By Julia Ingram and Layla Ferris
False: Social media posts claim Milwaukee mayor, a Democrat, said the city’s votes would not be counted on election night
On X, users claimed that the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee said at a news conference that Milwaukee would not be counting ballots tonight.
Details: Votes in Milwaukee will be tabulated tonight despite posts on the social media platform X that have pushed a false claim that Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said votes in the city won’t be counted on election night.
In reality, vote counting started Tuesday morning and will continue late into Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning at the city’s so-called “central count” location, according to Johnson’s communications director, Jeff Fleming.
“They’ve already started tabulating, and had tabulated thousands of ballots by this afternoon,” Fleming said. “The vote totals exceeded our original projections, so the workload at central count is higher than expected.”
Milwaukee’s votes can take longer to count for several reasons, Barry Burden, Director of the University of Wisconsin’s Elections Research Center, said.
“It’s the biggest city, and it has the most ballots, and it also counts absentee ballots at a central location,” Burden said. “That’ll be after midnight, 1 (a.m.) or 2 a.m.”
The city’s more than 200 election workers started counting votes at 9 a.m. Tuesday morning, Fleming said. They’ll continue the tabulation overnight, and ballots will be delivered to county clerks either the next day or the day after, depending on local rules.
By Chris Hacker
Spreadsheet error corrected: GOP U.S. House candidate says Harris County, Texas, early vote results showed big drops and spikes in early voting
U.S. House candidate Caroline Kane, a Republican running in Texas’ 7th District, posted on X Monday that Harris County’s early vote results showed significant drops and spikes in the number of early voters for several voting locations between Sunday and Monday, which should not be possible.
Details: Election officials said a misaligned spreadsheet caused the publicly reported early vote totals in Harris County to appear incorrectly. Local officials have corrected the document posted online by Kane. They noted the spreadsheet was labeled “unofficial” and said the error would not impact the official vote tally.
In a statement, the Office of the Harris County Clerk said, “In the process of updating the daily record of early vote totals for two vote centers (Baytown Community Center and Mission Bend Center), the formatting of the spreadsheet inadvertently misaligned, causing cells to shift and reflect incorrect numbers for other locations. Our office is aware and is actively working to correct the report.”
“I assure you that every vote that was cast will be accurately tallied,” the statement from the clerk’s office concluded.
By Jui Sarwate
Software malfunction prevented some voters from scanning ballots in Cambria County, Pennsylvania. Voting hours extended to 10 p.m. in the county.
Details: Local courts have extended voting hours from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. in Cambria County, Pennsylvania after local officials said a “software malfunction” prevented voters from scanning their ballots early Tuesday morning.
Voters are using paper ballots as technicians review the issue.
“All votes will be counted and we continue to encourage everyone to vote,” the county commissioner’s office said in a press release.
According to the county’s petition to extend voting hours, the malfunction “caused voter confusion, long lines of voters, and many individuals left the polling locations without casting a ballot.
“The Pennsylvania Department of State said it is in contact with Cambria County and is “committed to ensuring a free, fair, safe, and secure election.”
Cambria County, located in southwestern Pennsylvania, has a population of approximately 131,000. Trump won the county 68% to 31% in 2020, and he won by a similar margin in 2016.
By Steve Reilly, Julia Ingram, Layla Ferris
False: Non-citizens encouraged to vote in Philadelphia
Conservative commentator James O’Keefe claimed non-citizens are being encouraged to vote in Philadelphia.
Details: Philadelphia officials said allegations by commentator James O’Keefe that non-citizens are being encouraged to vote are incorrect. O’Keefe posted a new video on Monday claiming Election Clerk Milton Jamerson and Ceiba, a local non-profit, advised voting with an ITIN number, regardless of citizenship.
The video received 1.6 million views on X as of Tuesday, and was reposted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who said it was “the smoking gun of attempted election theft.”
Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein said the report was incorrect and non-citizens are not eligible to vote in Philadelphia. ITINs are for tax purposes and not linked to voting eligibility. Ceiba called O’Keefe’s claims “unfounded and based on harmful stereotypes.”
By Joanne Stocker and Emmet Lyons
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If the election in Pennsylvania is close, new challenges made to over 3,500 voters, many of whom live overseas and cast ballots by mail, could prove to be a pivotal part of the effort to undermine confidence in the 2024 election.
“Throughout the day Friday, several bad-faith mass challenges were filed in a coordinated effort in counties across the Commonwealth to question the qualifications of thousands of registered Pennsylvania voters who applied to vote by mail ballot,” the Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement.
Most of the voters are individuals who live overseas and vote absentee under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, a federal law that has allowed certain citizens living overseas to vote since 1986. This group of voters includes active military members, people who work abroad, and expats.
Additional challenges were filed questioning voters’ residency because they had a permanent mail forwarding address with the U.S. Postal Service.
“These challenges are based on theories that courts have repeatedly rejected,” the Pennsylvania Department of State said.
Josh Maxwell, chair of the Board of Commissioners in Chester County, said the elections office received hundreds of challenges from activists in his community based off USPS mail forwarding data. He believes the effort was made in an effort to deprive legitimate voters their right to vote.
“It’s about disenfranchising voters in a swing state and overturning the outcome of an election,” he said.
Many of these challenges arise from activists associated with organizations that say they focus on election integrity. In Chester County, the activist challenging votes claimed to be affiliated with the group PA Fair Elections in a video hearing last week. PA Fair Elections is part of a broader national initiative to scrutinize voter registrations and ballots, according to the progressive watchdog group Documented.
According to a report released to CBS News by Documented, PA Fair Elections is run by Heather Honey, an activist whose organization is known for her work to change elections procedures around the country.
Honey is the head of the Election Research Institute, and was involved in the controversial petition to the Georgia State Elections Board that would have made it easier for county boards to block the certification of elections, according to ProPublica. The rule has since been blocked by a Fulton County judge. Honey denies involvement in pushing the Georgia rule.
“Heather Honey is working as part of a well funded, nationally organized effort to manufacture election conspiracy theories, drum up thinly-sourced voter challenges and call the results into requisition when MAGA Republicans lose,” said Brendan Fisher, Documented’s deputy executive director.
PA Fair Elections denied any involvement in voter challenges in an email to CBS News. Heather Honey did not respond to a request for comment as of publication.
Aside from activist groups, several of the challenges to individual voters came from Republican State Senator Jarrett Coleman, who submitted challenges in Bucks and Lehigh Counties. The letter also says he submitted a $10 fee per voter challenge as required. Coleman’s office did not respond to CBS News for comment.
Now, counties with challenged voters must hold a hearing before the certification deadline on Nov. 12 about the status of these voters, which legal groups say is cause for concern. The ACLU sent an email to 67 county solicitors in Pennsylvania asking the officials to throw out the challenges to both groups of voters.
“Counties should formally dismiss or deny the challenges as quickly as possible to minimize any delay or disruption to the canvassing process,” the ACLU letter stated.
Both York and Chester counties have already rejected all the challenges.
Concern over overseas absentee voting has been amplified by former President Donald Trump, who posted on Truth Social in September that Democrats “are getting ready to CHEAT! They are going to use UOCAVA [Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act]
to get ballots, a program that emails ballots overseas without any citizenship check or verification of identity, whatsoever.”
Overseas absentee voting has become a rallying cry for self-described “election integrity” activists who claim individuals living overseas could be submitting fraudulent voter information. In the last few weeks, two lawsuits about overseas absentee voting have been thrown out in North Carolina and Michigan.
With the Pennsylvania challenges, election boards are the arbitrators, not judges.
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