Robinson v. Callais

Consolidated with:

• Louisiana v. Callais

Issues: (1) Whether the three-judge district court erred in concluding that race predominated in the design of Louisiana’s Congressional District 6 based on the state legislature’s stated intent to comply with the rulings of Robinson v. Ardoin without presuming the good faith of the legislature, attempting to disentangle the legislature’s racial and political considerations, or requiring an alternative map that satisfied both Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the legislature’s political objectives, as required by Alexander v. S.C. State Conf. of NAACP; (2) whether the district court erred when it disregarded the rulings of the courts in Robinson that preconditions specified in Thornburg v. Gingles could be (and had been) satisfied and instead required that the state’s enacted map satisfy the first Gingles precondition to survive strict scrutiny; (3) whether the district court erred in failing to accord the Louisiana Legislature sufficient breathing room to account for political considerations that resulted in a less compact district than necessary to satisfy Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act; (4) whether the district court erred in relying on extrarecord evidence and ignoring the evidence in the record on S.B. 8’s respect for communities of interest in concluding that S.B. 8 failed to satisfy strict scrutiny; and (5) whether the district court abused its discretion by unnecessarily expediting the proceedings and limiting the evidence presented in this complex, fact-intensive case.