Supreme Court Shakes Up Louisiana’s Congressional Map Politics

UPDATE: Governor Jeff Landry plans to suspend next month’s primary elections so lawmakers can pass a new congressional map. The Washington Post says Landry told Republican House candidates of this plan after the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s second majority Black congressional district.

ORIGINAL STORY:

A huge decision from the United States Supreme Court on the congressional map in Louisiana.

The Supreme Court has thrown out Louisiana’s congressional map. In a six-to-three ruling that fell right along ideological lines, the court ruled that the creation of the second majority-Black district, one that stretches diagonally from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, relied too much on race.

Governor Jeff Landry says they are still analyzing the ruling.

"I think if you will give us time to go through the opinion, we will have some clarity on what our options are and what exactly we'll do moving forward."

But the big problem is that federal elections are this year in Louisiana and candidates are gearing up for early voting that begins Saturday for the May closed primary races.

Landry says the Supreme Court’s time on issuing a ruling could have been better…

"The legislature and the people control the pen, not the federal government. Remember that legislature represents the people and their will is what is supposed to be implemented.

Landry hopes the result of the Supreme Court’s decision is an end to the court’s involvement in redistricting.

"We've spent tens of millions of dollars on lawyers on this case. That's all money that can't do to education, can't go to fixing our roads."

Attorney General Liz Murrill is pleased with this ruling.

We said from the beginning when we started out by defending our first map that we did not think we could draw a second majority-minority map without violating the equal protection clause and that we didn't think section 2 of the voting rights act required us to do that.

So now, the case is remanded back to the Western District of Louisiana. Murrill says in the meantime, a new congressional map will need to be drawn.

This ruling will like have a huge impact on the political future of Congressman Cleo Fields. His district is the one that will likely have to be changed the most.

But the big question is can a new congressional map be done in time for the 2026 general election? But Fields says the best course of action is to have a new map in place for the 2028 election cycle.