A voter casts a ballot in the key swing state of Ohio. (Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images)
New York Attorney General Letitia James and 19 other state attorneys general have thrown their weight behind the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 in a key case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
At issue is a ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which tossed out a legislative map that created two majority Black districts to comply with the Act.
In an amicus brief, the AG coalition supports Louisiana’s right to create two majority-Black districts after an earlier map was found to have violated the act.
The attorneys general argue that the constitution gives state legislatures ample “breathing room” to enact legislative maps that address likely VRA violations.
“Voters should be empowered to pick their representatives, not the other way around,” said James in a statement.
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“State legislatures have a constitutional right to redraw district maps when they are found to violate the Voting Rights Act and fail to fairly represent their communities.”
In 2022, a federal court in the Middle District of Louisiana found that the state’s congressional map likely diluted the votes of Black residents and thus violated Section 2 of the VRA.
In response, the Louisiana legislature enacted a new map this year that added a second majority-Black district.
A group of white voters sued the state in the Western District of Louisiana, arguing that the 2024 remedial map with a second majority-Black district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
Despite U.S. Supreme Court precedent allowing states to redistrict when there is a “good reason” to believe they are complying with the VRA, the three-judge court in the Western District of Louisiana barred the state.
Louisiana was effectively “trapped” between competing court orders and undermining the state’s ability to craft legislative districts that comply with federal voting rights law.
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The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the Western District of Louisiana’s constitutional ruling was correct.
The amicus brief argues that the federal court’s finding that Louisiana’s existing map likely violated the VRA provided the state with a good reason to believe a second majority-Black district was need to comply with the federal voting rights statute.
Alabama and 12 other states have also joined the case on the opposite side in support of the court ruling.
But accepting those arguments would undermine states’ decades-long reliance on the Supreme Court’s settled interpretation of Section 2 of the act, the amicus brief states.
“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
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Intimidation of black voters became a major issue in the 2024 presidential election.
Bomb threats U.S. officials linked to Russian email domains were phoned in to more than two dozen largely minority polling places in swing states such as Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, delaying voting for hours.
James has aggressive pursued voting rights cases during her tenure as attorney general.
In August 2024, James successfully defended New York’s Early Mail Voter Act, and also obtained up to $1.25 million from two conspiracy theorists who intimidated Black voters in New York with menacing robocalls.
In August 2021, James co-led a coalition of 22 attorneys general in opposing Georgia’s discriminatory law that would make it more difficult for millions of Georgians—especially Black Georgians—to vote.
The same year, James successfully sued the Rensselaer County Board of Elections (BOE) for failing to provide county voters with adequate and equitable access to early voting poll sites with adequate and equitable access to early voting poll sites.
Before the 2020 primary elections, James called for automatic absentee voting to allow individuals to vote during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Joining in the amicus brief are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.