WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on May 4 allowed its recent ruling limiting key parts of the Voting Rights Act to take effect early, increasing the chances of Republicans pushing for a new congressional map in Louisiana before the November election.
The court typically leaves a month behind a decision to give the losing party time to request another hearing.
Voters who won the case wanted the transfer to occur without a waiting period to provide more time for new maps to be drawn.
Black voters worried about losing congressional representation opposed the request and argued the judge should have kept the April 29 ruling until after the election, now that primary voting has begun.
The court’s response to the emergency request has not been signed off, but Justice Samuel Alito wrote unanimously that Louisiana should not use the map that was found to be unconstitutional. He suggested there is still time for the state Legislature to pass new maps.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, saying the court’s decision “sparked chaos” in Louisiana.
On April 30, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the May primary to give the state Legislature time to approve a new map that could give Republicans a seat or two.
The suspension is being separately challenged in court.
Different courts must decide how to apply the Supreme Court’s ruling invalidating existing maps. Before those judges can do so, the Supreme Court must send their ruling to them, which makes it final.
The judge often does not make a final decision until the losing party has run out of time to request a retrial. Requests for reconsideration are rarely granted.
People rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court following arguments over Louisiana’s congressional districts on March 24, 2025.
In the Supreme Court opinion, the majority said the losing black voters “did not express any intention to require this Court to reconsider its decision.”
“It is clear that the Court needs to act immediately,” Alito wrote.
Jackson, one of three liberals on the court, said the court seemed to be emphasizing a partisan position by shortening the normal waiting period due to objections from black voters.
“To avoid the appearance of favoritism here, we could, as usual, choose to remain on the sidelines and take no position by applying our default process,” Jackson wrote. “Today, however, the Court chose the opposite.”
State officials told the Supreme Court it doesn’t matter to them how quickly the justices move. Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Muriel wrote that the timeline will not affect the state’s ability to create new maps and election procedures for this year’s elections.
Once that happens, lower courts don’t need to step in, she said.
The map that the ideologically divided Supreme Court blocked 6-3 included two majority-black districts. A group of self-described non-Black voters filed a lawsuit arguing that “racial quotas” cost the state Republican seats in a narrowly divided Congress.
More: The Supreme Court weighs in on redistricting. Will it affect the national war?
The districts were created to protect the voting rights of the state’s black residents, who make up one-third of the state’s population.
But Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court’s majority, called the map “unconstitutional gerrymandering” that violated the rights of non-Black voters who challenged it.
Alito said the Voting Rights Act’s protections against minority vote dilution do not take effect when a map “fails to provide a sufficient number of majority-minority precincts.” Instead, he said, there must be evidence that district boundaries were established due to “intentional discrimination.”
The decision puts majority-black districts in Louisiana and majority-minority districts in other states at risk of being eliminated in redistricting.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court issues new emergency voting rights ruling, boosting Republicans
