Louisiana lawmakers passed a new congressional map on Friday that aims to flip a House seat to Republicans, leaving the state with just one majority-Black district.
The vote comes exactly one month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s previous map, ruling it an illegal racial gerrymander. That landmark decision weakened the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act and kicked off a high-stakes, coast-to-coast redistricting battle as both major parties fight for control of a narrowly divided U.S. House of Representatives.
State Republicans originally weighed a map that could have given them a shot at sweeping all six of Louisiana’s House seats. However, doing so would have meant spreading Black voters into Republican-held districts—a move some strategists feared could backfire and lead to GOP losses. Party members noted that the approved 5-1 map safer protects U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson from a challenging reelection bid. Republican Governor Jeff Landry is expected to sign the legislation into law.
Under the previous, court-ordered 2024 map, Republicans held four seats and Democrats held two, following a directive to comply with the Voting Rights Act by adding a second majority-Black district. After the Supreme Court threw out that map on April 30, Governor Landry postponed the state’s scheduled May 16 House primary until later this summer to give the legislature time to draw a replacement.
The newly passed map reshapes the district currently held by Democratic Representative Cleo Fields, shifting it to cluster around predominantly white communities in southern Louisiana and the Baton Rouge area. Meanwhile, it moves a portion of Baton Rouge into the heavily Democratic, New Orleans-based majority-Black district currently represented by Democratic Representative Troy Carter.
The new boundaries are already drawing criticism from multiple sides, and further lawsuits are anticipated. Democrats argue the map still constitutes a racial gerrymander by “packing” Black voters into a single district to dilute their influence elsewhere. Conversely, the plaintiffs from the recent Supreme Court case criticized lawmakers for leaving any majority-Black district intact.
Louisiana is not alone in rewriting its lines following the high court’s ruling. Several Republican-controlled Southern states have moved quickly to redraw their own maps.
Florida’s legislature passed new districts mere hours after the Supreme Court decision, a move that could hand Republicans up to four additional House seats. One week later, Tennessee adopted a map that carves up a majority-Black district in Memphis to help Republicans target an extra seat. In Alabama, a Republican effort to pick up a seat by redrawing two majority-Black or near-majority-Black districts remains tied up in court. Meanwhile, South Carolina’s Senate chose not to pursue redistricting.
Nationwide, Republicans estimate their various redistricting efforts could net them as many as 14 seats. Democrats, meanwhile, project they could counter those gains by picking up six seats through new maps in California and Utah.
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