Communities of interest, social justice, and congressional redistricting: the case of Louisiana's fourth district in the 1990s.

• Date: 22 December 2003
• Author: Tolbert, II, Charles M.,Deseran, Forrest A.,Blanchard, Troy C.
• Published date: 22 December 2003
• Author: Tolbert, II, Charles M.

Introduction

"MAJORITY-MINORITY" ELECTORAL DISTRICTS ARE FUNDAMENTAL TO A SOCIAL justice perspective. These are voting areas in which at least half the population belongs to a minority group that has historically had less political power than dominant majority groups. Writing as counsel for the Congressional Black Caucus, the late, retired federal judge A. Leon Higginbotham (1995: 666) put it this way:

The Caucus believes that the minority-majority districts ... are Indispensable in the fight for full integration of the American political landscape. Minority-majority districting is only a specific illustration of the more general goal of all districting, particularly single-member districting to allow district representation of numerical minorities whose votes otherwise would be submerged by those of the majority. In the context of American history and contemporary reality, minority-majority districting is often the only way of fully achieving the pluralist aspirations of American politics and remedying the longstanding exclusion of African Americans from full participation in government. In the fall of 1995, we were approached by the U.S. Department of Justice and asked to conduct social demographic research and analysis on the fourth congressional district of Louisiana. The fourth district had been a majority African American district since redistricting was done by the state legislature in 1992. We were asked to develop a research report and to testify for the United States in ongoing litigation (Hays v. Louisiana) over the fourth district, which was represented by Congressman Cleo Fields. Our involvement was motivated by a number of social justice concerns that were articulated well by Judge Higginbotham (1995: 668): Louisiana's District Four and other challenged majority-minority districts have served to move the United States beyond its deplorable history and toward the ideal of representative democracy, one that encourages the inclusion of all Americans in political discourse. Progress has been slow indeed; only after the 1992 congressional elections did the number of African-American members of Congress rise from 26 to 40. Absent the minority-majority districts that facilitated this change, America cannot realistically hope to soon achieve a racially integrated legislature that will adequately express the experiences and views of all Americans.

This article focuses primarily on our analytical approach to key issues and on the statistical results that we provided in our testimony. But, we also recount our interaction with the Justice legal team and some of our experiences in depositions and in federal court. We begin with a chronology of events leading up to our work and those that transpired after we completed our research and testimony.

Chronology of the Fourth District in the 1990s

In the aftermath of the 1990 census, the Louisiana legislature faced a difficult task. Due to low population growth, Louisiana had lost a seat in Congress. In the 1980s, one of eight congressional districts was majority African American. By 1990, the African American population represented 31% of the state's population. At the urging of Justice, the NAACP, and other advocacy groups, the legislature's aim in redistricting after 1990 was to delineate two majority-minority districts out of seven districts.

The Louisiana legislature redrew congressional districts in early 1992. Passed in May 1992, new state statutes created two majority African American congressional districts: the second district in New Orleans (held by incumbent William Jefferson) and a new fourth district that ran in a narrow band from Shreveport to the northwest corner of the state and then down the Mississippi River to Baton Rouge (no incumbent). With a minority population share of 62%, the fourth district is shown in the top panel of Figure 1 (found at the end of the article). The new district came to be known in many circles as the "Zorro" district because of its resemblance to the fictional character's trademark z-shaped signature (Fein, 1994). African American state senator Cleo Fields was elected in the fourth congressional district in November 1992.

In deciding Shaw v. Reno in 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court held that "racial gerrymandering" was unconstitutional unless the resulting district had a demonstrable "compelling government interest." Using the high court's rationale, Ray Hays of Ruston, Louisiana, and three other plaintiffs who resided in the fourth district filed suit (Hays v. Louisiana). Though all were Democrats--two white, one black, one Asian--the plaintiffs objected to the use of race as the basis for defining a congressional district. A federal district court agreed and struck down the 1992 Louisiana redistricting plan.

In April 1994, the Louisiana legislature in special session redrew the fourth district to be more compact, retaining its majority-minority status with 55% African Americans (The Advocate, 1995). Figure 1 depicts the redrawn fourth district in the middle panel for the 104th Congress. The Department of Justice approved the remap and sought to use the underlying rationale as a key test of the limits of the Shaw decision. The Department of Justice, the NAACP, and others hoped to use the notion of compelling interests to argue that a congressional district could be drawn to include areas steeped in the legacy of plantation economies. The communities of interest in such areas could be poor, rural whites and blacks, saddled with the bleak prospects of depressed post-agrarian economies. As a class, these persons--black or white--could face the same limited opportunity structures. If so, they were deserving of common representation, rather than being diluted across multiple districts. Therefore, it was a compelling interest of the state to address this underdeveloped area.

In fact, the redrawn fourth district traced the Red River corridor from Shreveport to Baton Rouge. This is indeed an area rich in plantation history, but poor of late in economic development. It is also an area in which African Americans are in the majority. Other social scientists--geographers, political scientists, economists, and historians--had previously assisted the state (and the other defendants, including Justice) in describing and analyzing the historical political economy of the area. We were asked to analyze newly released 1990 census data (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1994) to assess the compelling interests thesis in contemporary terms.

The three-judge federal district court arrived at its own district plan in July 1994. It combined parts of the state's version of the fourth district with the sixth district (held by white incumbent Richard Baker). Because both Congressmen Baker and Fields resided in Baton Rouge, they would likely run in a district that was 31% African American. Richard leyoub, Attorney General of Louisiana, filed an emergency motion to the U.S. Supreme Court in late July of 1994 to prevent the federal district court's plan from being implemented for the fall elections. The motion was granted and the congressional elections of 1994 proceeded under the state plan. Congressman Fields was reelected in the fourth district as newly drawn by the legislature (McMahon and McKinney, 1996).

The Hays...