BATON ROUGE — A handful of intervenors in the battle over Louisiana's proposed congressional map filed a notice of appeal Wednesday after a three-judge panel tossed out a plan that would have established a second minority-majority district extending from Shreveport to Baton Rouge.

Judges on Tuesday rejected the map, saying Louisiana lawmakers relied too heavily on racial considerations when drawing up new boundaries to use in this year's congressional elections. A dissenting judge said there were enough non-racial reasons to accept the map.

The notice of appeal was filed for nine individuals along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Baker Murrill said Tuesday that the state will "of course" appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Secretary of State's office said it must have the new map in hand by May 15 so there is enough time to line up voters for the Nov. 5 general election. The candidate filing period is July 17-19.

The map rejected Tuesday is the second one turned down in the federal court system. U.S. District Judge Shelley Dick previously threw out a map that didn't have a second minority-majority district in Louisiana. She said that a third of Louisiana's congressional districts should be minority-majority because about a third of the state's population is Black.

The latest map, adopted this year in a special legislative session, addressed that imbalance, but two of the three judges said race was too much of a factor. The map was extremely similar to a 1993 map that had been rejected.

Federal law prohibits racial gerrymandering. 

In a dissent, Circuit Judge Carl Stewart said there were enough political reasons to approve the maps, including the stated objective of protecting House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.