If state’s house passes bill, redrawn map could could give state Republicans a 5-1 congressional majority
On Thursday, the Louisiana state senate voted 27-10 to pass a new congressional map that would eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black House districts. The resulting map could give Louisiana Republicans a 5-1 congressional majority.
The supreme court’s recent decision in Louisiana v Callais, a case that centered on the state’s congressional maps, severely weakened the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The fallout from the decision was swift, with several other southern states calling special sessions to pass redistricting maps that would limit Black voting power.
Louisiana’s governor, Jeff Landry, a Republican, had immediately suspended the state’s ongoing house primary elections, despite 45,000 absentee ballots that were already cast – something that did not happen during the civil war, either world war or the Covid pandemic.
The map is nearly identical to one the state used in 2022 that resulted in a 5-1 Republican majority. It would drastically reshape district 6, which is currently represented by Cleo Fields, a Democrat, and make it more Republican. Under the unconstitutional existing map, the majority-Black district 6 runs almost 250 miles, from Baton Rouge and Lafayette in the south through Alexandria and to Shreveport in the north. The new map would be centered around predominantly white areas in the Baton Rouge suburbs and south Louisiana.
