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Louisiana’s attorney general is siding with the people who sued her, an unusual move that comes as part of a case that she hopes will reshape the Voting Rights Act, a decades-old law designed to prevent discrimination in the voting process.
Liz Murrill, who was solicitor general of Louisiana before becoming attorney general last year, told Fox News Digital in an interview on Tuesday that she expected the lawsuit and was prepared to agree with the plaintiffs.
Murrill, an elected Republican, had approved of a congressional map that appeared to favor Democrats, but in a perceived turnabout, she welcomed a lawsuit that challenged the map, saying it was a product of race-conscious “cracking and packing,” where minority voters were plucked out of various districts and consolidated into one.
“We’ve said all along, if section two [of the Voting Rights Act] requires us to do that, then it is in conflict with the equal protection clause, and section two has to yield, because the statute has to yield to the Constitution,” Murrill said, referencing the section of the Voting Rights Act that she is hoping the high court will gut.
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Murrill rejects ‘bait-and-switch’ claims
The case has a tangled, yearlong history.
One-third of Louisiana’s voters are black, but the state legislature kept a map after the 2020 census that remained favorable to Republicans. The new map leaned 5-1 in favor of Republicans and included one district with a black majority, rather than two.
Black voters and civil rights groups sued, and through a string of court battles, Louisiana was found to have violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting black voters’ votes.
Instead of the court taking it upon itself to create a new map, Murrill said the alternative was that her state could retain its sovereignty by reluctantly drawing its own 4-2 map that complied with the current Voting Rights Act jurisprudence and court orders, even though she believed the map violated the Constitution.
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Murrill said she did not pull a “bait-and-switch” and has maintained all along that creating a second district with a black majority is problematic.
“All along, we’ve said we don’t think we can do this, but because the courts have told us we have to do it, we’re going to go do it, and then we faced another challenge from non-African American voters, saying it violates the equal protection clause,” Murrill said. “We could have predicted, we did predict that would happen.”
‘So much stereotyping’
The Supreme Court has said it is examining whether the map Louisiana created with two black-majority districts violates the Constitution. Murrill agrees with the people who sued her and contends that it does.
“The only way to create a second majority-minority district would be to carve black voters off from five major cities in Louisiana, north to south, and pile them into a black district,” she told Fox News Digital. “That’s unconstitutional.”
The black voters and civil rights groups who have been advocating two majority-black districts have now reentered the legal fight and argued to the high court that creating such a map gives black voters an equal opportunity to elect the candidates of their choice. This is a requirement of the Voting Rights Act, which says minority groups’ votes cannot be diluted, they argue.
Murrill said that claim “has so much stereotyping of black voters built into it.”
“It’s not fair to just lump these people into large categories because of the color of their skin. That’s offensive,” Murrill said. “And yet, that’s what’s happening in redistricting, and it is being driven by this kind of test about whether the dilution of their votes results in an inability of them to elect candidate of their choice.”
What’s next for Louisiana
Based on Wednesday’s oral arguments, the Supreme Court appears poised to rein in race-conscious redistricting, though to what extent remains an open question.
The high court could make its decision as early as January or as late as June, meaning it is possible that Louisiana could adjust its maps to include one district with a black majority, instead of two, before the next midterms.
But Murrill said it was difficult to plan for the 2026 elections since the timing and substance of the high court’s decision is unknown.
“At the end of the day, all we can do right now is try and delay the qualifying dates to give the court time to rule and give our legislature time to know what the rules are,” she said.
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