NEW ORLEANS — A federal appeals court said Thursday that a legislative district map drawn by Louisiana lawmakers violated provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It said Louisiana couldn't have an exemption from a permanent, nationwide ban against racial discrimination in voting.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that, in some cases, Black people saw their voting strength weakened as legislators spread minority communities across multiple districts. At other times, the Legislature resorted to "packing" large numbers of Black people into Black-majority districts. 

A Baton Rouge federal judge had previously thrown out the maps, which were adopted in 2022, and on Thursday the 5th Circuit agreed with the decision. The attorney general's office said it disagreed.

“We strongly disagree with the Fifth Circuit panel’s decision," it said. "We are reviewing our options with a focus on stability in our elections and preserving state and judicial resources while the Supreme Court resolves related issues.” 

The U.S. Supreme Court is already handling a case involving Louisiana's congressional seats. Courts have said Louisiana legislators improperly used race as the main basis for creating a second Black-majority among the state's U.S. House seats.

In its summary of the case, the 5th Circuit said Congress had adopted the Voting Rights Act to combat an "unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution." Louisiana, the judge said, was seeking a way out.

"We decline the State's invitation to both eschew a clear mandate from the Supreme Court and disregard Congress's intent to order to grant Louisiana an exemption from 'the permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting," it said.

After a trial over the Louisiana legislative maps, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick said 18 state House districts and seven state Senate seats had been  "cracked or packed" and told the state it had to draw new maps that complied with the Voting Rights Act.

The House seats involved were around Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and Shreveport and in rural areas from Alexandria northward. Senate seats included several in and around New Orleans, one in north Baton Rouge and one northwest of Shreveport.

The state appealed on numerous grounds, including that a three-judge panel had to hear voting rights challenges. The appeals court said Dick handled the case properly because there was no challenge to the maps on constitutional grounds.

Louisiana also argued that Dick's ruling should have applied only in districts where she found trouble. The court said the matter wasn't that simple, because fixing a problem in one district would likely cause changes in an adjoining district.

"A successful challenge to even a single district can have broader remedial consequences," the court said. "(A) single change in one invalidated district will, at a minimum, impact an immediately adjacent district and could impact numerous other districts, both invalidated and non-challenged."

Louisiana had claimed Congress was required to revisit laws that have the Reconstruction-era Fourteenth or Fifteenth amendments as their base, like the Family and Medical Leave Act, parts of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act.

"The Reconstruction Amendments do not demand that Congress re-justify its judgments on a rolling basis," the court said, also noting that Louisiana had based its request on a concurring opinion in a Supreme Court case. "We are not free to adopt the views of (concurring or) dissenting justices over those of the (Supreme) Court's majority."