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The Supreme Court has delayed creating a majority Black voting district in Louisiana

Published June 28, 2022 at 1:32 PM EDT

FILE - A woman presents her identification to vote through a plexiglass barrier, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, on election day at the Matin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School, in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans on Nov. 3, 2020. Louisiana’s secretary of state and attorney general asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, June 17, 2022, to put a hold on a federal judge’s order for the state to create a second majority Black congressional district by Monday. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Updated June 28, 2022 at 6:03 PM ET

The U.S. Supreme Court has put a temporary hold on a lower court's order for the creation of a second majority Black congressional district in Louisiana.

The order by the high court, released Tuesday with dissents from the three liberal justices, comes after the lower court found that a newly drawn map of voting districts for Louisiana's six seats in the U.S. House of Representatives would likely violate the Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of Black voters.

The justices have paused the drawing of a new voting district until the high court rules next term in a separate but related redistricting case about Alabama's new congressional map. The court, which is hearing oral arguments in the Alabama case in October, put out a similar order for that state's map in February and has now also agreed to hear this Louisiana redistricting case.

As with Alabama, the delay ordered by the Supreme Court means that midterm elections in Louisiana have to take place this year using maps that lower courts have found are likely to hurt the power of Black voters.

In Louisiana, the map for this year's House races has white voters making up the majority in five out of six districts, as approved by the state's Republican-controlled legislature.