By Jack Brock and Marc Levy
Contributing Writers
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana lawmakers have passed a new congressional map 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.
Approval of the new House map came a month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current map as an illegal racial gerrymander, weakening the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act and widely expected to severely reduce Black representation in Congress.
The court’s decision intensified a national redistricting battle fueled by President Donald Trump’s efforts to protect the Republicans’ slim 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 Black voters to Republican-held districts, potentially backfiring with GOP losses.
The map approved on a 28-10 state Senate vote 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.
A half-hour Senate debate revolved around Democrats contending that the proposed map is racially gerrymandered to squeeze more Black voters — who tend to be registered Democrats — into a single district.
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.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to sign the new map into law. More lawsuits are expected over the new map.
Meanwhile, 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 contes. 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 Utah and California.
Florida’s Legislature passed new congressional districts just hours after the ruling, completing a redrawing that was in the works in anticipation of the decision. It could yield Republicans as many as four additional seats in the midterm elections.
Tennessee adopted new U.S. House districts a week after the ruling, carving up a majority-Black district based in Memphis in a Republican attempt to win an additional seat.
In Alabama, Republicans are attempting to pick up another seat by redrawing two districts where Black residents compose a majority or close to it. Democrats hold both seats, and the proposal is mired in a court battle.
South Carolina’s Senate, meanwhile, decided against redistricting, despite pressure from Trump.
Jack Brock and Marc Levy write for the Associated Press.
