Tensions boiled over in Louisiana over race and redistricting as a tumultuous hearing at the state capitol reflected the electoral chaos gripping the state after last week’s US Supreme Court decision that hollowed out a landmark civil rights law.
The ruling gave Republicans the chance to draw a new congressional map that erases one or both of the state’s two Democratic-held majority-Black districts.
The hearing over redistricting boiled over into chaos as security blocked the president of the state’s chapter of the NAACP, the largest civil rights organisation in the US, from entering the hearing room while protesters packed the halls outside.
At one point, the Republican committee chairman cut the microphone of a Democratic colleague mid-exchange, and the crowd erupted.
This was the latest flashpoint in a running battle over redistricting across the United States.
For more than eight hours, Black members of Congress, pastors, activists, and voters gave testimony — at times emotional, angry, and deeply personal.
However, this fight has swung decisively towards Republicans after last week’s six-to-three ruling by the Supreme Court — a ruling that struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, finding the state had improperly relied on race when drawing a second majority-Black district.
Critics, Friday’s protesters among them, say it guts a key Voting Rights Act protection, opening the door for Republican-led states to eliminate Democratic majority-Black districts long considered legally protected.
“We want our voting rights. We want the right area. We want the right councilman there. We want the map drawn right. That is our right. We went through this in the sixties. We’re not doing this no more,” one protester said.
“I feel like the last 50 or 60 years of my life, they didn’t happen. We’re back to where we were when I was a kid,” another said.
On Friday, the committee saw several competing proposals. These included maps drawn by Republican state Senator Jay Morris that analysts say would likely give Republicans five, or all six, of Louisiana’s seats in the US House.
Black voters make up one-third of the state’s electorate. Republicans already control four of the six districts.
Morris said race and party were not factors in drawing his maps. Democrats and activists disputed that, arguing the result would inevitably dilute Black political power.
The hearing also came during wider electoral confusion. Governor Jeff Landry suspended Louisiana’s May 16 US House primaries just two days before early voting was set to begin, even though tens of thousands of ballots had already been mailed.
Voters arriving at polling sites found signs on the doors: the congressional race was cancelled.
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Sarah Whittington, the group’s advocacy director, said: “We have a significant Black population with significant authority, power, pull across this state. And to suddenly acknowledge and say that they cannot vote for the person of their choice, because we will dilute that vote — we will crack their communities of interest, or we will pack them into single districts — is extremely problematic.”
Republicans in Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina have also launched similar efforts to eliminate majority-Black districts. Democrats have launched redistricting campaigns of their own.
However, Friday saw a serious blow to those efforts when the Virginia State Supreme Court threw out a new map approved by voters there that would likely have flipped four Republican seats in the US House.
US House lawmaker Cleo Fields, a Democrat whose own district was ruled unconstitutional, told the committee Friday that since Reconstruction, Louisiana has elected just four African Americans to Congress.
“The issue is not whether or not Cleo Fields serves another day in Congress. It’s really whether or not a person who looks like me has the opportunity to serve in Congress.”
“And listen, there’ll be another court, another Supreme Court opinion, and it’s going to invalidate this one. There’ll be another Congress. Congress will pass a law that has teeth and leave nothing for the interpretation for the courts. And we will get beyond this.”
What the new map will look like, and when Louisianans will next go to the polls for Congress, remains to be decided.
Source: Reuters
