Louisiana's conservative Supreme Court ruled on Friday that St. George, a wealthy and heavily white suburb southeast of Baton Rouge, could incorporate as a new city.
Residents of St. George had voted for incorporation by a 54-46 margin in a 2019 referendum, but lower courts had blocked it from going forward because of its potentially adverse effects on the finances of both Baton Rouge and St. George. By a 4-3 margin, however, the Supreme Court reversed those previous decisions and allowed incorporation to proceed.
The state capital of Baton Rouge, which consolidated its government with East Baton Rouge Parish following a 1947 referendum, oversees nearly all of the parish aside from a few small towns. According to data from the Census Bureau and VEST presented by Dave's Redistricting App, residents in the consolidated government's jurisdiction are 56% Black, 33% white, and heavily Democratic. By contrast, St. George's 81,000 residents are 67% white and just 18% Black, and the new municipality would be solidly Republican.
Supporters of incorporation originally sought to form their own school district, which would resegregate the parish's schools—an effort that remains ongoing. This push by conservative Southern whites to remove themselves from the jurisdiction of Black-run local governments is part of a movement that stretches back to the Jim Crow era. Recent decades have seen a nationwide increase in largely white communities seceding to form separate school districts.
Following incorporation, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry will appoint St. George's interim government until inaugural elections can be held. Local officials must now provide certain services that the city-parish government currently furnishes, but incorporation backers have said they plan to privatize many of these services. Yet even though St. George residents will continue to receive other services from the city-parish government and be able to vote in parish-wide elections, Baton Rouge will lose a critical part of its tax base.
Incorporation had been on hold after Parish Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, a Black Democrat who leads the consolidated government, sought to block the effort in court. Broome's lawsuit contended that incorporation violated state law because St. George couldn't balance its budget despite its supporters' claims. She also argued that Baton Rouge would have to impose severe budget cuts to key services and that the 2019 referendum process was improper.
A lower state court ruled against St. George, and an appeals court upheld that ruling last year. However, the Supreme Court's decision will now allow St. George to become the first new Louisiana city since 2005, when another heavily white and more affluent suburb northeast of Baton Rouge incorporated as the city of Central.
That same year marked a different milestone for East Baton Rouge Parish, when Democrat Kip Holden became its first Black mayor-president after ousting incumbent Bobby Simpson, a white Republican (Broome later succeeded Holden following elections in 2016). While the parish had long favored conservative white officials, it has become Democratic-leaning in recent decades as its Black population has grown.
But in light of these trends, these efforts at suburban secession bear all the hallmarks of a conservative white backlash.
Stephen Wolf April 30, 2024 at 11:30PM From Daily Kos
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