Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued what will surely be a landmark ruling in the case of , in which it declared the state’s current congressional district map unconstitutional and vastly limited the scope of the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2. Columnists Stephanie Grace, Quin Hillyer and Will Sutton recently discussed what it means and what comes next.
Grace: So what was everyone’s initial reaction to the Callais decision?
Sutton: I think the absolutely worst-case scenario would have been for them to say, “To hell with the Voting Rights Act, we're throwing this out.” I think this is the next worst-case scenario. It's like saying, “Here are the guidelines for your workplace and here's your workers’ bill of rights, except we're going to take away the list so there's nothing that is really in your favor.”
This has been something that has been relied on for decades, and we've made so much progress, and the progress isn't just for Cleo Fields or Louisiana or Black people. And now we're taking away the resources and tools that don't guarantee anything except to see whether districts can stand a test that gives people an opportunity for representation.
Hillyer: As a longtime opponent of the formula from an earlier case known as Gingles, I should be very happy with this decision because it did say that Section 2 still stands. The problem is that the reasoning was not necessarily internally consistent. I liked the immediate result and the immediate top-line explanation, but then when I read closer, the reasoning didn't seem to hold up and kept a situation where there is going to be a lot more litigation and trying to decipher the meaning.
Grace: What did you like about the top-line reasoning?
Hillyer: That it doesn't require proportional representation, but that — and they made it very clear — it does allow race to be taken into account when there is obvious discriminatory intent.
Columnist Stephanie Grace
Grace: I have so many reactions to this decision, and I feel like there are a lot of things that kind of lead to the same place, and that is a real potential loss of trust in elections.
One is the timing. We may never know why the Supreme Court decided to issue this decision just in time for Louisiana to change its election, but , and now we’re in the middle of litigation over the fact that people have started voting in an election that’s called off. That’s upsetting.
There’s also a reality check element to it. The Supreme Court essentially said that states can gerrymander based on partisanship. We already had this zero-sum constant fight, even in mid-decade, over redistricting for partisan advantage. And this just kind of lays out that that's where we are around the country, that if you’re not in the majority you don't have a right to representation. I think it’s a destructive message, and people are going to lose confidence in elections and in government, and also in the ability to work together.
What is representation?
Hillyer: Let me just say it depends on how you define representation. And I think conservatives define it differently than some liberals.
But the second thing is, I think in the long run what's going to come out of this, assuming that it doesn't get endlessly bogged down in litigation, is that it is going to push both sides to moderate, because the more that districts are not chosen by race, the more they’re closer to 50/50. And when they're closer to 50/50, suddenly you're going to have Republicans having to actually pay attention to Democratic voters and pay attention to Black voters in order not to lose close elections.
Grace: That goes to one of the dirty secrets about the voting rights era. We have an example around New Orleans. Steve Scalise has a very safe Republican district. He does not have to think about Democrats. Troy Carter has a very safe Democratic district. He does not have to think about Republicans. One exists because the other exists, because voters have been divided that way.
I do want to take you up on defining representation. In this context, I don’t mean that if you are a Black person, you are represented by a Black person. I mean that your point of view is represented in government.
Hillyer: In the short run, you're going to have all kinds of people running to take advantage of what they think the decision means. And they're going to probably misinterpret it in their own favor. But in the long run, I think it's going to increase the ability to be heard for the very reason you just talked about, because if the district is 54/46 rather than 70/30, then the guy who's on the 54 side is going to have to pay a lot more attention to the 46.
Columnist Will Sutton.
STAFF PHOTO BY CHRIS GRANGER
Sutton: I think one of the things that gets lost in conversations like this is that Black people, for the most part, vote for White people and Black people and other people. And in so many places, White people do not vote for Black people. This really is more of a Southern issue. We might go to the same events, cheer for the same teams, enjoy the same church service, but when we go in the voter booth, it's something totally different.
So I say that to address Quin's point about representation. It is not true with opportunity districts with the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 that it means Black people always elect Black people.
Hillyer: There are a number of Black Republicans in the South representing very strongly majority White districts. There is Wesley Hunt in Texas. There is Byron Donalds in Florida. There is Tim Scott from South Carolina, who, before he was a senator, got elected in a very White Republican district, defeating the sons of two former White governors.
I think that the more we concentrate on race, the more we deter developments like this, where people are voting not because of race but on completely different grounds, better grounds, than that.
Grace: We haven’t had examples of that in Louisiana.
Hillyer: But the point is that it's just not true across the South.
Drawing new congressional districts
Grace: Let's talk about the that is about to take place. What do we think is going to happen in terms of how many majority White seats the Legislature will draw?
Hillyer: Well, let me first say that I don't think that they should be doing this at all. I think that because the Supreme Court came out with the decision , after votes had already started to be cast, that the balance of rights being offended goes in favor of the current districts. They should have gone ahead with these districts for this election and changed it for the next election cycle. I think that this redrawing of districts when votes have already been cast is unfair to everybody involved.
Sutton: Yeah, I agree.
Grace: Me too. And it’s just one thing at this moment that I worry contributes to distrust in the electoral process. There's also the situation, where the governor and Legislature basically nullified an election in New Orleans for clerk of criminal court. There’s the change to , so voters’ choices are restricted in ways they’re not used to. There's a lot going on right now.
But given that lawmakers are poised to do this thing that none of us think they should be doing, what’s going to happen?
Sutton: I'm hoping that there will be enough conversations after hours and over dinner and lunch that they slow it down, and say, “Let’s take our time to do a good job, to essentially pursue what Gov. Landry has said recently, which is to do it right.”
I think I disagree with him on what right would look like, but I agree with the concept of stopping the situation of doing this over and over and over again.
Grace: Do you really think that's within the realm of possibility?
Sutton: I am hoping, and I'll even go so far as to say a prayer.
Hillyer: I don't think that's a possibility. As much as I disagree with the rush to change the districts, I think that the governor and most Republicans in the Legislature are determined to do it. The question is how. And I think it would be both fairer and wiser to make sure that they have districts as compact and as sensible as possible, rather than ones that overwhelmingly tilt the scales in a partisan direction.
Grace: So does that mean five Republican districts and one Democratic district, as opposed to trying to get them all Republican?
Hillyer: It means avoiding these crazy shaped districts that are clearly designed only to do incumbent protection, or conversely, only to disadvantage people, including other Republicans they don't like. What happened this last time was an abominable, intentional job of going after because he had displeased the powers that be, namely Gov. Landry. They could have done a second Black majority district without creating this crazy district that looked like E.T. being chased by a pterodactyl.
Not that they want to, but they could do a second Black majority district that would look normal and have actual communities of interest, rather than trying to shoehorn people together from 250 miles apart.
Grace: They did target Graves, absolutely. They also wanted to protect Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House. And I think that’s why we will not see some scenarios people are talking about now, one being an attempt to draw six Republican or White majority districts, and the other giving Cleo Fields a seat, as opposed to Troy Carter, because Fields is close to Landry.
The problem is that you’ve got a big chunk of Democratic voters, majority Black but not only Black, in New Orleans in Carter’s current district. If you divide them up, you're putting them in Republican districts, which makes it harder for those Republicans to have an easy ride. I don't think they want that.
Something else we need to talk about is Congress — the fact that there is a large and powerful Congressional Black Caucus that’s threatened. That could really change what our government looks like.
Sutton: Well, this is true of people in Congress generally, but some more than others, where you're elected to represent a district but people in other parts of the country feel like you're their second representative because of the issues that are important to you, because of the lived experiences that you have.
When it comes to something like the Congressional Black Caucus, from the time it was just a handful of people to now, where it's dozens of people, members represent far more than their districts. Bennie Thompson was born, raised, lives in, will never leave Mississippi, and people everywhere — and Black people in particular — see him as another representative for them.
One of the things that happens when you have tenure, as Troy Carter has developed, he's now moved up the ranks in Congressional Black Caucus leadership because there's this persona that he has outside of Louisiana. It’s likely he’ll be the CBC chair with a Democratic House. And Cleo Fields has that persona. A whole bunch of prominent people were at Jesse Jackson’s funeral, and they did not all get their names called. Fields’ name got called in Chicago.
So that's a different kind of representation that I think people don't think about.
A silver lining?
Hillyer: Let me make a prediction that's going to go against the conventional wisdom: That in the short term, there will probably be about five fewer Black Democratic representatives from the South, but that when the smoke clears after the next census and the first elections after that, there will be just as many, if not more, Black representatives in Congress.
One reason I am less bothered by this decision is because I really believe that within about eight years, things will balance out, and then there will not be fewer Black representatives.
Sutton: I wish I were that hopeful. I’m not right now.
Grace: This is kind of related, but we've had this intense polarization. There are so few moderates, there are so few swing districts in the country. Now, this could lead to what some think will happen in Texas, where they tried to create more Republican districts because Donald Trump asked them to, but in doing so, they created districts that are less completely Republican. So maybe this could lead to more moderation in Congress.
Hillyer: I think you will get more moderate Whites and more moderate Blacks, more moderate Republicans and more moderate Democrats in the intermediate term because of this decision.
Grace: That would be the best-case scenario.