Another reason the now-concluded 2024 First Extraordinary Session of the Louisiana Legislature failed was wasted energy on the nonessential task of state Supreme Court reapportionment.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and the GOP supermajorities in both legislative chambers scored an own goal by capitulating without good reason in willingly creating a congressional reapportionment plan that almost certainly will cost their party a seat in 2024, although the defective nature of the plan makes it likely that it will be litigated and that, probably, litigation in other venues that end up changing the existing parameters of reapportionment jurisprudence makes it unlikely that the same configuration will be around in 2026. Add to that the fact that Louisiana’s GOP politicians nearly put another shot into their own net by trying to do the same to Court districts in carving out a second majority-minority district to double up on the existing one.

Landry has been concerned for years about malapportionment of Court districts, which last faced reapportionment in 1997. Keep in mind, however, that current jurisprudence about judicial electoral districts is that malapportionment is not a justiciable issue, nor is any concern about racial representation since, in wording, neither the 14^th or 15^th Amendments nor the Voting Rights Act cover judicial elections, as that branch of government is considered to adjudicate and not make policy. There would have to be an extraordinary and unanticipated shift in that jurisprudence to change that to make judicial reapportionment a constitutional concern and in need of alteration.

What appears to have motivated Republicans to act was a consensus among a majority of Court justices that the political time was right for change. The most affected area, District 2 that would become converted into a majority-minority one, will have an open seat decided this fall. The other majorly affected area, District 6, has an age-limited justice. Both argued against the specific plan that all of the other five supported.

So, it was political opportunity, not any legal imperative, that drove the process. A longshot suit is out there begging courts to change their minds and apply the same legal rules that drive reapportionment of plenary bodies to courts, but it’s not even gone to trial after a few years. Worse, better solutions existed than a seven-district two M/M plan, if suddenly malapportionment and other traditional principles of reapportionment had become relevant. These included expanding the Court to nine members and introducing the typical selection method of judges sitting on a state’s highest court by partisan election, at-large (only five states have de novo elections every term for those judges – that is, there is not an initial followed potentially by retention elections – and of those, only Louisiana uses districts while Illinois uses districts as well but employs an initial/retention method).

However, both alternatives would have required amending the Constitution to take effect, which would have defeated the purpose of the 2024 cycle being the one where a change went into effect, unless it had gone on the April municipal runoff ballot, and of course in any event it requires larger majorities that didn’t appear at first to be present. The problem was, neither was it apparent that the simple majorities needed to create a Democrat-favored district out of a Republican-favored one among seven were there as well.

Already, Republicans had been asked to go to the well and swallow swapping a GOP-favored congressional district for Democrat-favored one, coached by their leaders – based on a fiction – that otherwise there was an ironclad outcome next month lasting until the next census of judicial imposition of a two-M/M map. That at best was misinformation, but many members out of ignorance or political calculation bought it and went along.

But no such imperative, whether real or not, was attached to the Court’s district arrangements. So, already having done something unpleasant and without any looming deadline, enough legislators, particularly senators, weren’t in the mood to sprint towards a change. While most Republicans in the House went along with it, when they approved, other bills were in play creating a particular dynamic, but by the time the Senate had it, those were settled and the question could be viewed in isolation to any other concerns. And without much wind in the issue’s sails, GOP Senate Pres. Cameron Henry decided to pull the plug.

Bringing up this superfluous task not only ate up political resources principally needed for changing the electoral system, soured the mood of some legislative Republicans on Landry, and created unnecessary divisiveness within the majority party, its dying on the vine also likely kills it for the near future. If the 2024 election cycle was so crucial to having this deal go through, by the time any constitutional changes could be done legislatively, it will be too late to get it on the ballot for citizen approval for this year’s election, and now limited to just working with seven districts, the issue will have to jockey with other priorities in a planned February special session or the regular session beginning in March.

Clearly if the goal was to pass a plan with two M/M Court districts in the session, that failed.