Louisiana Republicans pass new electoral map that guts majority-Black district | Louisiana
Louisiana Republicans on Friday approved a new congressional map that would eliminate a majority-black congressional district that was at the center of a landmark supreme court decision that struck down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
The new map reconstructs the state’s sixth congressional district, now represented by Black Democrat Cleo Fields. The court drew the district in 2024 after lawmakers found that the map lawmakers enacted after the 2020 census diminished the influence of Black voters and violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The new map will likely give Republicans control of five of Louisiana’s six congressional seats (the previous map had a 4-2 Republican-Democrat split). The bill now goes to Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, and he is expected to sign it.
“It does exactly what it was designed to do: consolidate white political power by fragmenting black communities and suppressing their votes in Republican-majority areas,” said the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the new map. “The communities targeted by this map — black voters in Baton Rouge, Shreveport, along the corridor represented by Rep. Cleo Fields — did not remain silent. They arrived at the Capitol in the middle of the night. They testified for hours into the early morning hours. They made their voices heard at every step of a process designed to minimize their contributions. This resistance is not over.”
The creation of the Fields district led to a lawsuit from a group of white voters in Louisiana who said voters were being illegally classified based on their race. The case of Louisiana v Callais eventually went to the high court, where it ruled 6-3 in favor of the plaintiffs. The case sets a new and nearly impossible standard for plaintiffs in Voting Rights Act cases, requiring them to prove intentional discrimination to win a redistricting case.
Following the high court’s ruling in late April, Landry took the extraordinary step of declaring an emergency to cancel the state’s congressional primary with votes already out. He postponed the election until the end of this year.
Louisiana is one of three Republican-led southern states that moved aggressively after the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate majority-black districts and add Republican-leaning areas. Tennessee and Alabama also tried to get new maps that added Republican-friendly districts.
