Louisiana enacts new congressional districts in a bid to give the GOP another seat

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana enacted a new map of congressional districts Friday that is designed to help Republicans pick up a seat while eliminating one of the state’s two majority-Black House districts, both of which are represented by Democrats.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the plan hours after it overwhelmingly passed the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature.

Approval of the new House map came a month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s current map — with its two majority-Black districts — as an illegal racial gerrymander, weakening the landmark 1965 federal Voting Rights Act. That decision intensified a national redistricting battle fueled by President Donald Trump’s efforts to protect Republicans’ slim U.S. 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 U.S. House seats. But that would have required adding more registered Democrats to Republican-held districts, potentially backfiring with GOP losses.

The map approved Friday in a 28-10 state Senate vote along party lines reflected Republican arguments that a 5-1 map is safer for the GOP and better protects U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson from facing a difficult reelection. Republicans currently hold four of Louisiana’s six congressional seats.

‘Vicious race to the bottom’

Democrats contend that the new map is racially gerrymandered to squeeze more Black voters — who tend to be registered Democrats — into a single district.

Democratic state Sen. Royce Duplessis pointed out during floor debate Friday that some other Southern states, such as South Carolina, had refused to redraw their maps in the middle of an election year, and said Louisiana is participating in a “vicious, vicious race to the bottom.”

The bill's sponsor, Republican state Sen. Jay Morris, repeatedly insisted that party affiliation, not race, drove 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 told the map demographers to avoid including any data on race or including those statistics in information shared with lawmakers before the vote.

Democratic state Sen. 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 by including 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 postponed the state’s closed U.S. House primary slated for May 16. He later signed a law making the U.S. primary open and shifted the date to Nov. 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.

The new map redraws Democratic U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields' district, clustering it around predominantly white communities in the Baton Rouge area and southern Louisiana. It also adds part of Baton Rouge to a heavily Democratic, majority-Black district based in New Orleans currently represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Troy Carter.

More lawsuits were expected over the new map.

Democrats say the map could draw a legal challenge over racial gerrymandering, and the ACLU of Louisiana suggested Friday that it could sue, calling the map a “racial gerrymander hiding behind the thin veneer of partisanship” and warning that "this fight is just beginning.”

Meanwhile, the victorious plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision criticized the Legislature's map earlier this week for leaving a majority-Black district in place.

Nationwide battle over district lines

In the weeks following the Supreme Court’s decision, several other Republican-controlled Southern states have seized upon a weakened federal Voting Rights Act to try to redraw their own congressional districts.

So far, Republicans are winning the redistricting contest. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they will win a narrowly divided U.S. House in November. Republicans think they could gain as many as 15 seats from their redistricting efforts so far, while Democrats think they could gain six seats from new districts in California and Utah.

Meanwhile, a court decision in Wisconsin on Friday could give Democrats a new avenue to pick up seats in 2028.

The liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court said it would hear an appeal of a case filed by a bipartisan coalition of business executives that seeks to redraw the state’s Republican-friendly congressional districts. Republicans hold six of the state’s eight House seats, but only two are considered competitive.

A three-judge panel dismissed the case in April. Those who filed the lawsuit weren't seeking a ruling in time for the 2026 election. Instead, they are asking the state Supreme Court to send the case back to the lower court for a trial on their claims, which would likely not take place until 2027.

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Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.

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