Reapportion 19th Judicial District Now!

In 2022, the Louisiana Legislature will use 2020 Census data to reapportion the legislature, Congressional districts, the PSC, BESE, and judgeships. Meanwhile, the House Committee on House & Governmental Affairs is holding hearings throughout the state.  In mid-November, they held a public hearing at Southern University.  This was my testimony:

BATON ROUGE — I had the pleasure of representing Baton Rouge in the Louisiana House of Representatives for 28 years and served in the Constitutional Convention. There I drafted the Declaration of Rights of the Louisiana Constitution, which is one of the most progressive Constitutions and Bill of Rights in the nation, even now.  

By the way, if you take a look at the Louisiana Constitution, you see that we prohibited all discrimination based on race, and that was nearly 50 years ago.

Back in the 1960’s, when I was editor of the North Baton Rouge Journal newspaper, we proposed single-member districts for the legislature, City-Parish Council, and East Baton Rouge Parish School Board in our paper.  

In 1970, the federal courts actually adopted that and put single-member districts into effect, and the legislature immediately changed, both in the House and the Senate.  

We went from no black members of the House to the first six black members since Reconstruction.  Today it’s maybe 35 black members of the House of Representatives.  Similar changes were made in the Senate.  So this has been evolving over the years.

I had the pleasure of living in North Baton Rouge, where I grew up, and I still live there, about a mile from where I grew up. It is a minority area.

I’m involved at Istrouma High School, my alma mater, which went from 99 percent white to now 99 percent black.

Now, we here in East Baton Rouge Parish have a problem that you need to address as legislators. 

Back in the early 1990’s, among our district judges here in East Baton Rouge Parish, we had only one black member of the judiciary.  That was because judges were elected parishwide, rather than by district. The only black judge at that time was District Judge Freddie Pitcher.  

I was one of the those legislators who came forth and authored the legislation establishing subdistricts for the election of district judges in East Baton Rouge Parish.

We created three subdistricts in that legislation. One was the minority subdistrict, a mostly black area that was assigned five district judges.  We wanted to give black voters the opportunity to elect at least five of the 15 district judges in the parish, and that is what happened.

Unfortunately, today the subdistricts are exactly the same.  Thirty years have passed, and they have not been reapportioned. No effort has been made to adjust the allocation of district judges to the changing population of the parish.  As a result, there is a malapportionment of our judicial subdistricts.  

The minority district has far more judges than it is entitled to based on population and other parts of the parish are underrepresented. Even though nearly 50 percent of voters in the parish are white, currently nine of the judges are black and six are white.

As a conservative, I took a lot of heat for helping create a plan that immediately created five new judgeships where blacks would be elected.  Of course I did that in consideration of the black population of this parish.

Now the reverse is true. 

Subdistrict No. 1, which is the minority subdistrict. It has only 58,000 voters but five district judges.

Subdistrict No. 2 has 100,000 voters and it has five district judges.

Subdistrict No. 3 has 134,000 voters, and it too has five district judges. District  3 is vastly underrepresented.

Subdistrict No. 1 has 48,000 blacks and 7,600 whites.

Subdistrict No. 2, the northern district, has 49,000 blacks and 45,000 whites.

Subdistrict No. 3, the southern district, has 92,000 whites and 31,000 blacks.

So this parish is just about 50-50 black and white. Logically, there would be 8 white judges and 7 black judges.

Instead, we have 9 black judges and 6 white judges — even though the voting population is 145,000 whites and 129,000 blacks.

As a person who came forward in the 1990’s and said it’s not right that we have only one black judge in East Baton Rouge Parish, I have to say that today the process is out of balance again.  We are extremely malapportioned in our three judicial subdistricts and it must be corrected.

I know everyone here is concerned about the legislature and Congress, but we also have reapportionment issues to address at the local level. Some of those issues, like this one, are controlled by the state.  It is the legislature who draws these maps.  

We need to have our judicial subdistricts with roughly equal population.  One man, one vote does not apply.  Nevertheless, we cannot have malapportioned judicial subdistricts.

***

Having gone through three reapportionments, I would like to give you a couple of words of advice, as result of my 28 years in the House.

No. 1, I would say, try to create districts around communities, so your representatives or senators can really represent a community.  

I disagree with the idea of Professor Samuelson that there should be a second majority black Congressional district.  We already have the 2nd Congressional Distict which is a long snaky, spidery districts that ranges everywhere it can to pick up a few minority voters here and a few more there.  That’s why it meanders from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

I guess you could have another snaky district somewhere but that puts so much emphasis on race.

We don’t need to apportion like that.  We need to keep communities together. North Louisiana, South Louisiana and all the areas where we live should have representation based on community.

We need to stop emphasizing race.  What’s really important is policy. For example, we have had black mayors of this parish for the past 20 years, and as a resident of North Baton Rouge, we have seen no improvements in the past 20 years!

Our garbage still doesn’t get picked up.  The sidewalks are not maintained.  The servitudes are not cleaned.

It’s not about race.

It’s about whether these public officials represent what we believe in and do they provide the services that they are supposed to perform!

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you!