Proposed Louisiana congressional map advances
Judge declines to block Georgia’s shortened runoff election period
ATLANTA – A federal judge in Georgia has declined to block part of a sweeping election law that shortened the state’s runoff election period to four weeks from nine weeks while legal challenges play out.
U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee ruled Friday that plaintiffs hadn’t proved that the shorter period disproportionately harmed Black voters, or that Republican lawmakers intended to discriminate against Black voters when lawmakers enacted the measure in 2021. He denied a request for a preliminary injunction, but the claims can still be litigated at trial.
Several voting advocacy and civil rights groups, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, sued after Republican state lawmakers passed the measure less than six months after former President Donald Trump narrowly lost the state and made false claims about widespread election fraud.
Georgia has an unusual requirement for a runoff election when no candidate wins a majority in a general election – most states declare the highest votegetter the winner. That has meant multiple high-profile contests being settled after the normal November general election date in recent years.
The lawsuits assert that parts of the law deny Black voters equal access to voting and violate the U.S. Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act. But Boulee said there wasn’t enough evidence that losing the ability to register before a runoff or the ability to vote on some weekend days were discriminatory.
“Plaintiffs did not present any evidence, however, which would show why Black voters would disproportionately struggle to vote during the new early voting period,” the judge wrote.
Boulee said evidence showed “at most” that Republican lawmakers were trying to curtail new Democratic voters with the registration restrictions, but said the law doesn’t protect people from partisan discrimination in the same way it does racial discrimination.
The law shortens the number of early in-person voting days before a runoff and makes very tight the time for mail ballots to be received and returned. Those changes could disadvantage
Democrats, who tend to push early voting and vote-by-mail more than Republicans.
Lawyers ask court to block execution by nitrogen hypoxia
MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Attorneys for the first inmate slated to be put to death with nitrogen gas have asked a federal appeals court to block the execution scheduled later this month in Alabama. Kenneth Eugene Smith’s attorneys on Monday asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to block his Jan. 25 execution. The appellate court will hear arguments in the case on Friday.
The state plans to place a face mask over Smith’s nose and mouth to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen – an inert gas that makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans – causing him to die from lack of oxygen. The nitrogen gas would be administered for at least 15 minutes or “five minutes following a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer,” according to the state protocol.
Three states – Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma – have authorized nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, but none have attempted to use it. The question of whether Alabama will ultimately be allowed to attempt the nation’s first execution using nitrogen gas could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Smith’s attorneys appealed a judge’s Jan. 10 decision to let the execution go forward. They argued that the new nitrogen hypoxia protocol is riddled with unknowns and potential problems that could violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They said the concerns over the novel execution method and how Smith was chosen as the “test subject” should be more fully considered by a court before the execution proceeds.
“Because Mr. Smith will be the first condemned person subject to this procedure, his planned execution is an experiment that would not be performed or permitted outside this context,” Smith’s attorneys wrote in the Monday court filing.
The low-oxygen environment could cause nausea leading Smith to choke to death on his own vomit, his attorneys argued. Or if he is exposed to less than pure nitrogen, they argued he was at risk of feeling the sensation of suffocation or being left in a vegetative state instead of dying.
The Alabama attorney general’s office has called those concerns speculative and argued in court filings that the deprivation of oxygen will “cause unconsciousness within seconds, and cause death within minutes.” The state will file its objection to Smith’s request for a stay later this week.
BATON ROUGE, La. – A proposed Louisiana congressional map with a second majority-Black district, which could deliver another U.S. House seat to Democrats, received bipartisan support and advanced through a legislative committee Tuesday.
During the second day of Louisiana’s special redistricting session, lawmakers took their first in-depth look at proposed congressional boundaries, backed by newly inaugurated GOP Gov. Jeff Landry. Under the proposal, the district currently held by Republican U.S. Rep. Garret Graves would become a majority-Black district.
GOP state Rep. Glen Womack, who filed the legislation, said that race was not the “predominate factor” in deciding where the new boundaries would lie, but rather “politics drove this map” – ensuring that the seats of Louisiana’s leadership in congress, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, would likely be reelected.
Unsurprisingly, Graves was not pleased with the proposed map, sarcastically praising the “imaginative creativity” of the bill, The Advocate reported. Under the current map, in Graves’ district 23% of the voting-age population is Black.
With the proposed map, that number would increase to 54%.
Louisiana is among the list of states still wrangling over congressional districts after the U.S. Supreme Court in June ruled that Alabama had violated the Voting Rights Act. The battle over Louisiana’s congressional boundaries has played out in the legislative chambers and in court for more than a year and a half.
The current map – which a federal judge said violates the Voting Right Act by diluting the power of Black voters – has white majorities in five of six congressional districts despite Black people accounting for one-third of Louisiana’s population.
Currently the only majority-Black district, which encompasses most of New Orleans and stretches to Baton Rouge, is held by U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, the state’s sole Black and Democratic member of Congress.
From wire reports