Robinson v. Ardoin

On March 30, 2022, the ACLU, ACLU of Louisiana, the Legal Defense Fund, and Paul Weiss filed an action in federal court on behalf of the Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP, Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, and several individual voters challenging the congressional redistricting plan adopted by the state legislature over the veto of Governor Edwards. The lawsuit argued that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act required the state to add a second congressional district in which Black voters had an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.

On June 6, 2022, after a week-long evidentiary hearing, the district court found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed in proving that Louisiana’s congressional map violated Section 2 of the VRA, and granted their motion for a preliminary injunction, prohibiting the state from conducting elections under the challenged redistricting plan and allowing the legislature two weeks to adopt a new plan. Defendants sought to stay the decision in the Fifth Circuit, but the Court denied the stay on June 12, 2022, holding that “plaintiffs have prevailed at this preliminary stage given the record as the parties have developed it and the arguments presented,” and “the defendants have not met their burden of making a ’strong showing’” of likely success on the merits.” Defendants sought a stay and a writ of certiorari before judgment in the Supreme Court, which the Court granted but held the case in abeyance pending its decision in Allen v. Milligan.

Plaintiffs defended that ruling on appeal in an oral argument before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in October 2023. In November, the 5th Circuit agreed that map is probably discriminatory, but determined it would allow the state Legislature an opportunity to draw its own map.

In June 2023, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and lifted the stay following its decision in Milligan and remanded the case to the Fifth Circuit, where the parties submitted supplemental briefing regarding the impact of Milligan and presented oral argument on October 6, 2023. In November 2023, the Fifth Circuit issued its decision, agreeing that Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their VRA claim that the congressional map unfairly dilutes the votes of Black Louisianians, but vacated the prior preliminary injunction on the grounds that there was time for a trial prior to the 2024 midterm elections, and sent the case back to the district court for further proceedings including trial if needed.

The district court set two alternative dates for trial, providing the Louisiana legislature the opportunity to pass a new map first if it desired and giving the plaintiffs time to decide whether to challenge that map. In January 2024, the legislature passed a new map containing two majority Black voting age population districts that satisfied the plaintiffs, and the court thus vacated the trial date.