5th Circuit Says Louisiana Can Dissolve 1992 Consent Decree for State Supreme Court
Today, the nation’s most conservative appeals court ruled that Louisiana officials can dissolve a decades-old consent decree that was established to ensure fair representation on the state Supreme Court.
The decision from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means that the state will no longer be bound by a 1992 consent decree that established a single majority-Black district in Orleans Parish for state Supreme Court elections. The court determined the state has satisfied its obligations under the decree.
The ruling comes months after Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed a new state Supreme Court map into law in May, establishing two majority-Black districts and giving Black voters a better chance at fair representation in a state where they comprise nearly a third of the population.
After lawmakers passed the map, the plaintiffs (Ronald Chisom and Black Louisiana voters) filed a motion in May seeking to dissolve the decree, after years of fighting the state to keep it alive.
In the dissent, judges wrote that the state failed to produce sufficient evidence showing it has fully complied with the decree. “In fact,” the opinion said, “before the district court, the State refused to commit to protecting a majority-minority voting district after dissolution of the Chisom decree.”
“To hold to the contrary, as the majority does, whittles the evidentiary burden imposed by Rule 60(b)(5) to near-nonexistence and will only embolden future, meritless challenges to other existing consent decrees.”
The question of whether the decree should remain intact stemmed from a 1986 lawsuit from Black voters in Louisiana who challenged the system Louisiana had in place at the time for electing the state’s seven Supreme Court justices.
Under that system, five justices were elected from five single districts and two justices were elected from one multi-member district that includes the majority-Black Orleans Parish. The state had never had a Black justice on the state Supreme Court prior to the decree.
After a lengthy legal battle, the involved parties entered a consent decree in August of 1992 that called for the Louisiana Legislature to reapportion the seven districts to include a single-member district that is majority-Black in voting-age population and includes Orleans Parish. Lawmakers codified the decree into law, and it became effective on Jan. 1, 1999, according to a 2022 plaintiff brief.
Over a two-decade span, Louisiana voters in Orleans Parish elected three Black justices to serve on the high court in the seat established by the consent decree — Justices Revius Ortique, Jr., Bernette Johnson, and Piper Griffin.
During Johnson’s tenure, the plaintiffs state, the question arose of whether her service on the temporary seat — created by the consent decree — should be credited toward her total tenure on the court. Johnson, who was vying for a chief justice position, filed a motion in federal court to reopen the old case, so she could seek a declaratory judgment that she was the rightful successor to the position. The state opposed Johnson’s bid, arguing that she should instead defer to Louisiana on the issue. But a federal court sided with Johnson, who later retired in 2020.
In 2021, Landry, who was state attorney general at the time, filed a motion to dissolve the consent decree. “The state has upheld its end of the deal,” Landry wrote in an August 2022 brief. At the time, he argued that the state fulfilled all of its obligations under the decree, and that a population imbalance among Supreme Court districts required the state to redraw them.
But the federal district court in 2022 ruled that the state attorney general did not sufficiently show that enforcement of the consent decree “would be detrimental to the public interest” and said the state “is under no pressing obligation to reapportion the supreme court districts.”
The state appealed the district court ruling to the 5th Circuit, which affirmed the decision to keep the decree in effect. In November, the state asked the entire 5th Circuit to rehear the case, which it did in May.
After lawmakers passed the new map, the plaintiffs filed a motion in May seeking to dissolve the decree. In a rare consensus during oral argument in May, attorneys for the plaintiffs seemed to side with the state, telling the court that the new map demonstrates Section 2 compliance that’s “consistent with the agreement’s terms and guiding case law,” said Leah Aden, of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Law360 reported.
“The district court has the authority under the express terms of the consent decree to determine what the final remedy is,” Aden said. “To the extent that the state agrees that [the newly enacted map] is legal, and it should be operative, there is no reason why this couldn’t be disposed of within 30 days.”
In its ruling Thursday, the 5th Circuit noted that if the state again violates federal law, “victims may file a new lawsuit to bring the (state) back into compliance.”
“Courts overseeing consent decrees can rest easy knowing that, once the decree has been satisfied, federal law provides a remedy for any later violation.”