State legislatures should retain their authority to redraw congressional districts that align with the Voting Rights Act, Maryland’s attorney general and his counterparts in other states wrote in arguments submitted Friday to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The case before the nation’s highest court involves the map of congressional districts in Louisiana, where state lawmakers redrew the district lines in 2024 after a federal court ruled the map enacted in 2022 likely violated the Civil Rights-era voting law.
Legislators added a second majority-Black district to comply with the section of the law barring discrimination based on race in voting systems. When a group of voters challenged the new map, alleging it was racially gerrymandered, a separate three-judge panel in the state ruled the map could not take effect.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in November to take up the case, known as Louisiana v. Callais.
“The Voting Rights Act was the product of a struggle endured by those who had been denied the right to vote, so that we could build a better future and form a more perfect union,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a statement after joining 19 other attorneys general in a brief to the court. “Our Office will resist efforts to dismantle the law and weaken any state’s ability to address inequality in exercising the right to vote. The right to cast a ballot is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it should be protected.”
State lawmakers redraw congressional and state legislative districts every decade after each census as they account for population changes.
Challenges alleging racial or partisan gerrymandering are common — including during Maryland’s latest round of changing the district lines in 2022, when a new map was adopted only after a judge called an initial effort “a product of extreme partisan gerrymandering.”
Brown and the other attorneys general argued Friday that states are allowed “breathing room” when faced with likely violations of the Voting Rights Act and given the chance to redraw district lines. They also asked the justices to reject arguments from a coalition of other states led by Alabama, which they argue would change the precedent around similar VRA cases.
The defendants arguing for keeping the Louisiana map with the two majority-Black districts are represented, in part, by the American Civil Liberties Union, the national group that has also argued VRA cases in Maryland.
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