Louisiana passes new congressional map to eliminate majority black district, giving GOP another seat

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

Approval of the new House map came a month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s existing map as an illegal racial gerrymander, weakening the landmark federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. The decision intensified a redistricting battle nationwide, fueled by President Donald Trump’s efforts to protect Republicans’ slim House majority in the midterm elections. Louisiana is one of several Southern states now redrawing its maps to help Republicans.

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Republicans in Louisiana had considered drawing a map that would give the party a chance to win all six US House of Representatives seats in the state. But that would have required adding more black voters to Republican-controlled areas, which could backfire with GOP losses.

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

A half-hour debate in the Senate revolved around Democrats asserting that the proposed map was racially gerrymandered to squeeze more Black voters — who tend to be registered Democrats — into one district.

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The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Jay Morris, has repeatedly insisted that party affiliation, not race, drives district lines.

“I intentionally put more Democrats in the 2nd District to make the remaining districts do better for Republicans,” Morris said at one point.

Morris said he asked demographers on the map to avoid including any data on race or including those statistics in the information shared with lawmakers before the vote.

“I think this is a district that has racial gerrymandering, which is going to get us into a lot of trouble here,” Democratic state Sen. Sam Jenkins told Morris.

“Agree to disagree,” Morris told Jenkins.

Read more: Louisiana Senate passes new US House map that would eliminate majority black district

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to sign the new map into law.

Louisiana currently uses a court-ordered map drawn in 2024 to comply with the Voting Rights Act by including a second district with a majority Black population.

However, this map was challenged in court, and the Supreme Court responded on April 30 by striking it down as an illegal racial gerrymander.

Landry postponed the US House of Representatives primaries, scheduled for May 16, until later this summer to allow Republican lawmakers time to draw and pass a new map.

The proposed map redraws the district of US Democratic Representative Cleo Fields, grouping it around predominantly white communities in the Baton Rouge area and southern Louisiana. It also adds part of Baton Rouge to a predominantly black, Democratic district based in New Orleans and currently represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Troy Carter.

More lawsuits were expected over the new map.

Democrats say the proposed map could spark a lawsuit over racial gerrymandering. Meanwhile, plaintiffs in a U.S. Supreme Court decision criticized the Legislature’s map earlier this week for leaving a majority-Black district in place.

“From the beginning of the process, I said we were building a house on a broken foundation — and now it looks like quicksand,” Democratic state Sen. Royce Duplessis said during the debate. “I’m really troubled by the fact that we’re going to continue to lead this race to the bottom.”

In the weeks following the Supreme Court’s decision, several other Republican-controlled Southern states took advantage of the weak federal voting rights law to try to redraw their congressional districts.

So far, Republicans are winning the redistricting contest. But this does not necessarily mean they will narrowly win the divided US House of Representatives in November. Republicans believe they could pick up as many as 15 seats from redistricting efforts so far, while Democrats believe they could pick up six seats from new districts in California and Utah.

The Florida Legislature approved new congressional districts just hours after the ruling, completing a redrawing process that had been in the works in anticipation of the decision. It could give Republicans up to four additional seats in the midterm elections.

Tennessee adopted new U.S. House districts a week after the ruling, gerrymandering a majority-black district based in Memphis in a bid for Republicans to win an additional seat.

In Alabama, Republicans are trying to gain another seat by redrawing two districts where black residents are a majority or close to it. Both seats are held by Democrats, and the proposal is mired in a court battle.

Meanwhile, the South Carolina Senate decided against redistricting, despite pressure from Trump.

Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.