Judges block Louisiana's congressional map. A Supreme Court appeal is likely

A federal court has blocked Louisiana from using the state's new congressional map for this year's elections, marking the latest twist in a long-running redistricting battle over the rights of the state's Black voters.

This legal fight could help determine the balance of power in the next Congress and set up an opportunity for the Supreme Court to revisit the constitutionality of one of the key remaining parts of the embattled Voting Rights Act, which has been weakened by the high court's conservative majority over the past decade.

In a 2-1 decision released on Tuesday, the three-judge court found that the map of voting districts — which Louisiana's state legislature drew during a January special session with two majority-Black districts to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — violates the Constitution, ruling in favor of a group of self-described "non-African American" voters who argued that the state engaged in racial gerrymandering.

"The predominate role of race in the State's decisions is reflected in the statements of legislative decision-makers, the division of cities and parishes along racial lines, the unusual shape of the district, and the evidence that the contours of the district were drawn to absorb sufficient numbers of Black-majority neighborhoods to achieve the goal of a functioning majority-Black district," wrote U.S. District Judge David Joseph and Judge Robert Summerhays, both appointees of former President Donald Trump, in the majority opinion for the case known as Callais v. Landry.

In a dissenting opinion, 5th U.S. Circuit Judge Carl Stewart, a Clinton appointee, wrote, "The totality of the record demonstrates that the Louisiana Legislature weighed various political concerns—including