Louisiana lawmakers approved a new congressional map that could enable Republicans to win one of the state’s two Democratic-held House seats in 2026. The Louisiana Senate gave final approval to the bill after dissent from Democrats. Democrats criticized the map as flawed and likely to be struck down, arguing it eliminates a majority-Black district. The new map followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that invalidated the existing map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The decision weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and prompted mid-decade redistricting efforts in Louisiana and other states. Democrats warned the changes could reduce Black representation in Congress.
"The Louisiana Senate gave final approval to a bill with the new map after much dissent from Democrats. "Y'all, at the beginning of this process, I would have said that we are building a house on a broken foundation. Now, it feels more like quicksand, because we're in 2026 going into a map that we know is flawed, that we know is going to get struck down," state Sen. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat, said on the Senate floor."
"State Sen. Jay Morris, a Republican, defended the map ahead of the final vote. "I think we have a map here that meets all the traditional redistricting criteria. It's not racially gerrymandered. ... I think it broadly allows for representation for each region of the state, and it's very fair, and we should approve it," Morris said."
"The new map comes weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state's current map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The landmark Supreme Court decision dealt a blow to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and set off a newfound scramble of mid-decade redistricting in Louisiana and other states that Democrats say could drastically reduce the number of Black representatives in Congress."
"On Thursday, during hours of floor debate, several Democratic state representatives condemned the redrawn map, which eliminates one of the two majority-Black districts in the state, as discriminatory. "I want to ask you to remember the argument that we should now be colorblind about a congressional map, in this state of all states, requires forgetting a quantity of history that I don't believe any of us has the right to forget. Black people in this country were not citizens; not partial citizens, not second-class citizens. We weren't citizens at all," state Rep. Kyle Green, a Democrat and member of the Louisiana Legislative Black"
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