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02-06-2026
BATON ROUGE: Louisiana lawmakers have passed a new map of congressional districts designed to help Republicans pick up a seat in the United States House of Representatives but to do so, the map eliminates one of the state’s two majority-Black districts, both of which are represented by Democrats.
Approval in Louisiana’s legislature came on Friday. It follows an April decision from the US Supreme Court striking down Louisiana’s current map as an illegal racial gerrymander because it was drawn to include two majority-Black districts.
That ruling, in the case Louisiana v Callais, weakened the landmark 1965 federal Voting Rights Act, meant to prevent discrimination against minorities at the ballot box.
It also intensified a national redistricting battle fueled by President Donald Trump’s efforts to protect the Republicans’ slim House majority in the midterm elections. Louisiana is one of several Southern states now redrawing their maps to help Republicans.
Louisiana Republicans had considered drawing a map giving the party a shot at winning all six of the state’s US House seats. But that would have required adding more registered Democrats to Republican-held districts, which could have potentially backfired with Republican losses.
Republicans currently hold four of Louisiana’s six congressional seats and they are slated to pick up a fifth with the newly passed map.
It was approved on Friday by the Louisiana state Senate in a 28-to-10 vote.
‘Vicious race to the bottom’
Republican Governor Jeff Landry is expected to sign the new map into law, even as threats of more litigation emerged Friday.
A half-hour Senate floor debate revolved around Democrats contending that the proposed map is racially gerrymandered to squeeze more Black voters, who tend to be registered Democrats, into a single district.
Democratic state Senator Royce Duplessis pointed out that some fellow Southern states, such as South Carolina, had refused to redraw their maps in the middle of an election year. He warned that Louisiana is participating in a “vicious, vicious race to the bottom” by participating in the redistricting push.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Senator Jay Morris, repeatedly insisted that party affiliation, not race; drove the new district boundaries.
“I purposely put more Democrats into District 2 to make the remaining districts better performing for Republicans,” Morris said at one point.
Morris said he instructed the map demographers to avoid including any data on race or including those statistics in information shared with lawmakers before the vote.
Democratic state Senator Sam Jenkins told Morris, “I think it’s a racially gerrymandered district that’s going to get us into a lot of trouble here.”
“Agree to disagree,” Morris told Jenkins.
More litigation expected in Louisiana
Louisiana is currently using a map ordered by a lower court in 2024 to comply with the Voting Rights Act. It includes a second district with a majority-Black population.
That map, however, was challenged in court, and the Supreme Court responded on April 30 by striking it down as an illegal racial gerrymander.
Landry has postponed the state’s closed US House primary slated for May 16 to allow for the new congressional map to be implemented.
He later signed a law making the US primary open and shifted the date to November 3 to allow time for Republican lawmakers to draw and pass a new map. All candidates, regardless of party affiliation, will be on the ballot for voters in their district. (Int’l News Desk)
