The Supreme Court on Wednesday turned down a request to take a mulligan on last week’s major Voting Rights Act ruling, freeing Louisiana to rush a redraw of its congressional map.
The court, without comment, rejected the request for a rehearing.
Last week’s ruling found that the state had wrongly been pressured into redrawing its map ahead of the 2024 election to include a second majority-Black congressional district. Normally the justices would then wait about a month before issuing the final judgment, or order, concluding the case.
But at the request of Louisiana, they sped the mandate through on Monday.
At the time, the justices pointed out that the losers in the case hadn’t signaled they would ask for a rehearing.
On Tuesday, after the high court acted, one of the parties belatedly said they would indeed seek a rehearing and asked the justices to recall their judgment.
Such a rehearing is rarely granted, but forcing the court to wait several weeks before issuing the mandate would have complicated Louisiana’s plans to speedily draw up a new map.
No justices noted a dissent from Wednesday’s decision rejecting the request.
But the timing of the case has become a major issue.
Democrats complained after Louisiana’s governor halted voting in the primary midstream, effectively tossing thousands of votes that had already been cast absentee.
But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who wrote the opinion in the original ruling, suggested in Monday’s ruling that the state had to redo its maps because the old map had now been found “unconstitutional.”
He included a striking footnote saying that the “constitutional question was argued and conferenced nearly seven months ago.”
Legal observers interpreted that as a signal that the majority on the high court had wanted to issue its opinion earlier, but was delayed by the dissenters in last week’s decision.
