The Supreme Court accelerated its judgment on Louisiana's congressional redistricting on Monday, allowing the state to redraw its maps ahead of the midterm elections and triggering a sharp rebuke from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The procedural move breaks from standard practice. Normally, the Court waits 32 days to formally issue its judgment to lower courts. Louisiana requested an expedited timeline last week, arguing that the state urgently needed to redraw maps after the Court's landmark decision striking down its existing congressional map and gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The majority agreed.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the circumstances justified the departure from routine. Early voting had already begun, the legislature's congressional map had been ruled unconstitutional, and the general election loomed six months away.
The ruling provides legal cover for Louisiana Republicans, who took the extraordinary step of canceling the May 16 primary for Congress after mail-in ballots had already been sent to overseas voters. That decision now faces separate litigation, and the Supreme Court's accelerated judgment strengthens the state's legal position for holding new elections.
Jackson, in dissent, accused the Court of abandoning impartiality and tilting the scales toward Louisiana's political interests. She noted that in the past 25 years, the Court had expedited its rulings only twice before Monday.
"To avoid the appearance of partiality here, we could, as per usual, opt to stay on the sidelines and take no position by applying our default procedures. But, today, the Court chooses the opposite," Jackson wrote. "Not content to have decided the law, it now takes steps to influence its implementation."
She went further, characterizing the Court's action as the majority abandoning judicial restraint. "The Court's decision to buck our usual practice under Rule 45.3 and issue the judgment forthwith is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana's rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map," she said.
Alito responded sharply, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Jackson's charge of partiality was "baseless and insulting," he wrote. He challenged the premise that speeding up judgment necessarily violates principle.
"The dissent goes on to claim that our decision represents an unprincipled use of power. That is a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge," Alito wrote. "What principle has the Court violated? The principle that Rule 45.3's 32-day default period should never be shortened even when there is good reason to do so?"
Author James Rodriguez: "The Court's willingness to rush its own procedures in a voting rights case tells you everything about how fractured this institution has become on race and representation."
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