Louisiana's Republican-controlled legislature voted Friday to redraw the state's congressional map, collapsing two majority-Black districts into one and creating an additional seat likely to elect a Republican to Congress.
The measure passed the state Senate after weeks of House revision, positioning Louisiana to send five Republicans and one Democrat to Washington starting in 2026. Republicans currently hold a 4-2 edge in the delegation.
The redrawn boundaries follow a Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down the existing map as a racial gerrymander and further weakened protections under the Voting Rights Act. State legislators said they complied with the court's directive by focusing on partisan advantage rather than race when drawing new lines.
Republican state Sen. Jay Morris, who authored the legislation, argued the map met traditional redistricting standards. "We have a map here that meets all the traditional redistricting criteria, it's not racially gerrymandered. I feel like it's going to be very defensible," Morris said.
State Rep. Beau Beaulieu, the House Republican leading the redistricting effort, echoed that defense. "We focused on the Democrat numbers, not the racial numbers when drawing," Beaulieu said. "We focused in this case on partisanship, which is what Callais said, and I mentioned in my intro, is clearly permissible."
Democrats challenged the plan as mathematically impossible to separate from race. The state's Black population represents roughly one-third of Louisiana's residents but would hold only one of six congressional seats under the new map, shrinking their representation from 33 percent to 16 percent.
During Thursday's House debate, Democratic state Rep. Kyle Green Jr. objected sharply. "We are being asked to take one of two minority opportunity districts in this state, where Black Louisianians are nearly one-third of the population, and to reduce that minority opportunity representation to a single seat out of six, from 33% of the population to 16% of the representation members," Green said. "That's not a map, that's a math problem with the moral answer, and the answer is no."
The surviving Black-majority district stretches from New Orleans to Baton Rouge and is expected to face legal challenges from voting rights organizations.
State officials delayed Louisiana House primary elections originally scheduled for May 16 to allow time for the redistricting process, effectively discarding roughly 40,000 votes already cast in earlier primary contests.
The new map comes as part of an unusual mid-decade redistricting wave that President Donald Trump initiated last year by urging Republican states to redraw boundaries to strengthen GOP House representation. Democrats pursued similar strategies in several states, but recent court decisions, including the Callais ruling and Virginia's Supreme Court blocking a Democratic gerrymander, tilted momentum toward Republicans.
Legal disputes are likely to continue for years, though Louisiana's map may be the last one implemented by a state legislature before the 2026 election cycle.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "The court said move away from race, but the math doesn't lie, and voting advocates will be in court over this for years."
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