Louisianas

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday put off ruling on a second Black majority congressional district in Louisiana, instead ordering new arguments in the fall.

The case is being closely watched because at arguments in March several of the court’s conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.

The case involves the interplay between race and politics in drawing political boundaries in front of a conservative-led court that has been skeptical of considerations of race in public life.

Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a brief dissent from Friday’s order that he would have decided the case now and imposed limits on “race-based redistricting.”

The order keeps alive a fight over political power stemming from the 2020 census halfway to the next one. Two maps were blocked by lower courts, and the Supreme Court intervened twice. Last year, the justices ordered the new map to be used in the 2024 elections, while the legal case proceeded.

The call for new arguments probably means that the district currently represented by Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields probably will remain intact for the 2026 elections because the high court has separately been reluctant to upend districts as elections draw near.

The state has changed its election process to replace its so-called jungle primary with partisan primary elections in the spring, followed by a November showdown between the party nominees.

The change means candidates can start gathering signatures in September to get on the primary ballot for 2026.

The state’s Republican-dominated legislature drew a new congressional map in 2022 to account for population shifts reflected in the 2020 census. But the changes effectively maintained the status quo of five Republican-leaning majority white districts and one Democratic-leaning majority Black district in a state in which Black people make up a third of the population.

Civil rights advocates won a lower-court ruling that the districts likely discriminated against Black voters.

The Supreme Court put the ruling on hold while it took a similar case from Alabama. The justices allowed both states to use congressional maps in the 2022 elections even though both had been ruled likely discriminatory by federal judges.

The high court eventually affirmed the ruling from Alabama, which led to a new map and a second district that could elect a Black lawmaker. The justices returned the Louisiana case to federal court, with the expectation that new maps would be in place for the 2024 elections.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave lawmakers in Louisiana a deadline of early 2024 to draw a new map or face the possibility of a court-imposed map.

The state complied and drew a new map, with two Black majority districts.

But white Louisiana voters claimed in their separate lawsuit challenging the new districts that race was the predominant factor driving the new map. A three-judge court agreed.

Louisiana appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.

May 19 (UPI) — U.S. officials announced Monday that Louisiana’s McNeese State University will be site of the federal government’s new national center for liquefied natural gas safety.

The university in Lake Charles was selected by officials to be the site of the “National Center of Excellence for Liquefied Natural Gas Safety” as a subsidiary part of the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

“The sheer volume of product supplied by the state of Louisiana is unparalleled and growing, and there is no better place to locate our Center of Excellence,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

McNeese State, the first U.S. undergraduate institution to offer a certificate program in the business of liquefied natural gas, is already the site of its own LNG Center of Excellence.

It was described as a “game-changer” for the region in terms of workforce development and “groundbreaking research.”

“We are excited to be on the forefront of helping ensure safety and sustainability in the energy sector and look forward to working with PHMSA to develop a world-class facility to house their staff,” Dr. Wade Rousse, president of McNeese State University, said Monday.

2020’s Protecting our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety Act, otherwise known as the PIPE Act, established the center with the aim to “enhance” the United States as the “leader and foremost expert” in LNG operations to facilitate research and development, training, regulatory coordination and to encourage development of LNG safety solutions.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., explained that in 2020 Congress passed the PIPES Act which, he claimed, “improved pipeline safety and infrastructure” in the United States as he also thanked the Trump administration.

The Louisiana Republican, 73, was critical of the Biden administration’s perceived “hostility” toward fossil fuel industry industry.

Last year, the current president solicited $1 billion and got hundreds of millions of dollars from the oil and gas industry in the 2024 campaign while promising to roll back fossil fuel regulations in his effort to stamp out climate change policy.

The U.S. Department of the Interior announced last week it had expedited oil and gas production on public land in vehement opposition to environmental experts and activists.

Meanwhile, the Trump Energy Department in February signed-off on a Biden policy to permit the use of liquified natural gas as marine fuel in order to reduce LNG regulations targeting motor boats.

Kennedy, who reportedly received more than $300,000 in campaign contributions via the fossil fuel industry from 2021-2022, added that as part of the legislation was language that was included to create the “first-ever” National Center of Excellence for LNG Safety in Louisiana under PHMSA, which by 2013 had marked a record number of 116 enforcement orders against American pipeline operators for various safety violations by the federal regulator.

“The Center will advance LNG safety by promoting collaboration among government agencies, industry, academia, and other safety partners,” stated PHMSA’s Acting Administrator Ben Kochman.

“Consolidating such remarkable levels of expertise,” according to Kochman, will “benefit the LNG sector for many generations to come.”