NEW ORLEANS — Voting rights advocates on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to keep the latest Louisiana congressional map in place for this year’s elections, even though a three-judge panel has given the state Legislature until June 3 to develop a third set of boundaries.

The three-judge panel ruled April 30 that the new map, passed by lawmakers in January, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Wednesday’s Supreme Court filing seeks to block that ruling, keeping the new districts in place while appeals continue. Attorney General Liz Murrill says she, too, plans to ask the high court to keep the January map in place.

Louisiana is under orders to create another mostly Black district would give Democrats a chance to capture another House seat. The latest map converts District 6, represented by Republican Rep. Garret Graves, into a seat that stretches from Baton Rouge to Shreveport. The three-judge panel said its creation relied too much on race.

Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields, a former congressman who is Black, had said he would run for the seat, likely against Graves. Two other candidates have announced plans to run but have not raised money, according to federal election records.

Supporters of the new district, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, say the lower court decision effectively means Louisiana has no congressional map in place for the fall election, and no realistic chance for the Legislature to adopt one in time.

The state currently has five white Republican U.S. House members and one Black member who is a Democrat. All were elected most recently under a map the Legislature drew up in 2022. About one-third of the state is Black, but only one-sixth of the state's congressional members are Black.

US. District Judge Shelly Dick, of Baton Rouge, blocked subsequent use of the 2022 map, saying it likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act by dividing many of the state’s Black residents — about a third of the population — among five districts. A federal appeals court gave lawmakers a deadline earlier this year to act.

A group of self-identified non-African American voters filed suit against that map, saying it was unconstitutionally drawn up. 

Backers of the map said political considerations — including maintaining districts of House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise — were a primary driver of the map in the Republican-dominated Legislature.

The panel said Tuesday that it would impose its own map on the state if the Legislature doesn't adopt a plan by June 3. It rejected the state's claim that it must have the map in place by May 15, noting that state officials testified in a hearing last year that they could wait until late May.

In a friend of the court brief, a group of LSU and Tulane professors this week suggested a map that includes no majority Black district but said it should still produce two minority members of Congress.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.