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https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-voting-rights-race-louisiana-348260f08099d087bcde4a93140aa8b2
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican attack on a core provision of the Voting Rights Act that is designed to protect racial minorities comes to the Supreme Court this week, more than a decade after the justices knocked out another pillar of the 60-year-old law.
In arguments Wednesday, lawyers for Louisiana and the Trump administration will try to persuade the justices to wipe away the state’s second majority Black congressional district and make it much harder, if not impossible, to take account of race in redistricting.
“Race-based redistricting is fundamentally contrary to our Constitution,” Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill wrote in the state’s Supreme Court filing.
A mid-decade battle over congressional redistricting already is playing out across the nation, after President Donald Trump began urging Texas and other Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines to make it easier for the GOP to hold its narrow majority in the House of Representatives. A ruling for Louisiana could intensify that effort and spill over to state legislative and local districts.
The conservative-dominated court, which just two years ago ended affirmative action in college admissions, could be receptive. At the center of the legal fight is Chief Justice John Roberts, who has long had the landmark civil rights law in his sights, from his time as a young lawyer in the Reagan-era Justice Department to his current job.
“It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,” Roberts wrote in a dissenting opinion in 2006 in his first major voting rights case as chief justice.
In 2013, Roberts wrote for the majority in gutting the landmark law’s requirement that states and local governments with a history of discrimination, mostly in the South, get approval before making any election-related changes.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican attack on a core provision of the Voting Rights Act that is designed to protect racial minorities comes to the Supreme Court this week, more than a decade after the justices knocked out another pillar of the 60-year-old law.
In arguments Wednesday, lawyers for Louisiana and the Trump administration will try to persuade the justices to wipe away the state’s second majority Black congressional district and make it much harder, if not impossible, to take account of race in redistricting.
“Race-based redistricting is fundamentally contrary to our Constitution,” Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill wrote in the state’s Supreme Court filing.
A mid-decade battle over congressional redistricting already is playing out across the nation, after President Donald Trump began urging Texas and other Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines to make it easier for the GOP to hold its narrow majority in the House of Representatives. A ruling for Louisiana could intensify that effort and spill over to state legislative and local districts.
The conservative-dominated court, which just two years ago ended affirmative action in college admissions, could be receptive. At the center of the legal fight is Chief Justice John Roberts, who has long had the landmark civil rights law in his sights, from his time as a young lawyer in the Reagan-era Justice Department to his current job.
“It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,” Roberts wrote in a dissenting opinion in 2006 in his first major voting rights case as chief justice.
In 2013, Roberts wrote for the majority in gutting the landmark law’s requirement that states and local governments with a history of discrimination, mostly in the South, get approval before making any election-related changes.
