BATON ROUGE — Louisiana officials on Friday asked the Supreme Court to step into the battle over the state’s failed effort to draw new congressional maps. In a court filing two months out from the qualifying period, the state seeks permission to use a map a three-judge panel threw out late last month.

"Louisiana's impossible situation in this redistricting cycle would be comical if it were not so serious," the state's lawyers say. Federal courts have had the proposed maps tied up since the first one was adopted for the 2022 election. 

Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry’s office has said both that it needed maps in place by next Wednesday and also that it could wait to have them until the end of the month. A panel of judges this week said that with Louisiana lawmakers in session until June 3, they should be able to approve a suitable map by then.

Attorney General Liz Murrill said Friday that wasn't good enough, citing a 2006 Supreme Court case from Arizona (Purcell vs. Gonzales) that barred late changes in election rules.

"This case screams for a Purcell stay," her office wrote. "The late-breaking injunction, plus the court's blowing through election deadlines in search of an imaginary, litigation-proof 2024 congressional map, is the sort of 'late judicial tinkering with elections law' that threatens 'disruption and unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others."

This time around, Louisiana's tortured effort to create a congressional map dates to the 2020 Census. Every 10 years, using the latest population figures, legislators create boundaries that place approximately the same number of people in each district.

U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick rejected the Legislature’s original map, which ultimately was used in the 2022 elections, saying two of Louisiana’s congressional districts should be majority Black because one-third of the state’s population is Black. After the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld her decision, lawmakers meeting in a special session in January passed a map with two predominantly Black districts.

A three-judge panel sitting at Shreveport ruled April 30 that race was too great a factor in its creation. 

Louisiana wants the Supreme Court to let it use a map in 2024 without having to go back to the literal drawing board. The three-judge panel handling the current case said it will draw boundaries June 4 if lawmakers cannot get the job done by June 3.

The state says if the January map with the two majority-Black districts cannot be approved quickly, the state would have to resort to using the 2022 boundaries, which included only one majority-Black district.

The panel on Thursday turned down the state's request for a stay of its orders tossing the map and setting a timetable. The state said that, this close to an election, the preferred path forward is to take a path that avoids “grave risks of electoral confusion, chaos, and errors.”

Relying on the Purcell case, multiple courts have held that changes in election procedures, including maps, should not occur with an election pending in the short term.

June 4 this year is 154 days before the general election. In 2022, the Supreme Court enjoined the use of a Louisiana map 155 days before the election. “The same result would likely follow here,” the state wrote while asking the three-judge panel to stay its order.

Murrill's argument attempts to illustrate the difficult position Louisiana finds itself in: Under the Voting Rights Act, it must create a second majority-Black district, but when it does, it must ensure that race is not the primary factor in setting boundaries.

With this year's three-judge panel — after federal courts in western Louisiana in the 1990s — rejecting second majority-Black districts as the result of racial gerrymanders, Louisiana again finds itself in the position of "the Australian who went bonkers trying to throw away his old boomerang."