A majority of Louisiana's Supreme Court justices have thrown their support behind a proposal aimed at adding a second Black justice to the seven-member high court, calling on lawmakers to redraw maps so that there's an additional majority-minority district in time for the fall 2024 election.
In a letter to Gov.-elect Jeff Landry, Attorney General-elect Elizabeth Murrill and the top lawmakers in the state House of Representatives and the Senate, four Republican justices and the high court's lone Democrat endorsed a map that they said would resolve a challenge to the state's voting districts that was filed in federal court in 2019.
"We feel the time to act relative to these issues is now," the justices wrote in their two-page letter, adding that the district maps haven't been updated in more than a quarter-century. The letter was first reported by WDSU-TV.
Landry said Friday he will include the justices request in his call for a special session, which is set to begin Jan. 15 to deal with separate redistricting issues.
"We agree that the current districts are malapportioned and the Court is in need of a new map," Landry said in a statement.
The letter urging the change was signed by Justices Jefferson Hughes, James "Jimmy" Genovese, Will Crain and Jay McCallum — all Republicans — along with Justice Piper Griffin, a Democrat. Griffin is the state Supreme Court's only Black justice and its lone woman.
A sixth justice, Justice Scott Crichton, objected to his colleagues' recommended map in his own letter to the executive and legislative branches.
Chief Justice John L. Weimer, who has no party affiliation, didn't sign either of those letters. He said he was still preparing his own remarks Friday afternoon.
On Friday evening, Weimer sent out a lengthy missive raising a series of concerns with the redistricting plan. He wrote that he believes that new maps that better reflect the state's diversity are overdue, but added that he has strong misgivings about the shapes of some of the proposed districts.
Weimer, whose district is centered around Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, has more than nine years remaining in his term, but is barred from seeking another one. He pointedly questioned the politics around the proposed new map, saying he was told it was "designed to protect three justices who face re-election."
"I have been advised everyone who has received the letter from my colleagues and the majority of the Legislature and the parties to the litigation have all decided that this redistricting plan is final and complete and non-negotiable," he wrote. "I am not privy to who is 'calling the shots' such that the Legislature has possibly already capitulated to this proposed plan before a public hearing can be held."
The pitch for the new map comes as the Legislature is preparing to convene for a special session to redraw its congressional maps to create a second majority-Black district after federal courts ordered the change.
Those orders did not address the current configuration of the Supreme Court's districts. But the Louisiana conference of the NAACP and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law brought a federal lawsuit in 2019 that argued those maps were unconstitutional. That suit is still pending.
The lawsuit pointed to a disparity in the high court's racial makeup: While Louisiana's population is nearly 33% Black, the state Supreme Court has just one Black justice out of seven, or 14%.
That means the Black underrepresentation on the court is slightly more pronounced than in the state's congressional delegation. Of six U.S. House districts, just one is majority-minority.
Three bills in the state House proposed adding a second majority-Black state Supreme Court district during a round of redistricting last year. However, none reached the floor for a vote. The high court's districts have been redrawn just twice in the last century.
Rep. Phillip DeVillier, a Eunice Republican whom the House GOP has designated as its next speaker, and Sen. Cameron Henry, a Metairie Republican who will take over as the Senate's president, each received the letter from the Supreme Court justices.
Neither returned messages seeking comment Friday.
Though he didn't join with the other justices who signed the letter, Crichton, a Republican who will be term-limited next June, said he supports creating a second district with a majority of minority voters.
But he said the redistricting would leave "well over half a million citizens" in District 2 — which currently stretches along Louisiana's western border from Bossier to Beauregard parishes — without a say of who ought to represent them on the high court.
The proposed map from the Supreme Court majority splits those voters between Districts 3 and 4, which would take in most of the northern and western parts of the state. District 2 would move to Louisiana's eastern border, stretching from East Carroll down the Mississippi River towards Baton Rouge.
Crichton said that means those living in what is now District 2 will be represented by justices they didn't vote for, until 2026, when elections would be held for the newly drawn Districts 3 and 4.
By doing so, the high court "disenfranchises every member of this district, who become subsumed" into two other districts, Crichton wrote.
Lawmakers are expected to convene in a special session in January to redraw the congressional district maps. The five Supreme Court justices who signed the letter are proposing that the Legislature take up the new court map at the same session.
