Louisiana's Map Drawn to Add GOP Seat Goes to Governor

Louisiana lawmakers passed a new congressional map Friday designed to pick up a Republican seat while leaving the state with just one of its two majority-Black House districts represented by Democrats. Louisiana Republicans had considered drawing a map giving the party a shot at winning all six of the state's seats. But that would have required adding more Black voters to Republican-held districts, the AP reports, potentially backfiring with losses. Some Republicans said a 5-1 map better protects US House Speaker Mike Johnson from facing a difficult reelection in his Louisiana district. The state Senate passed the plan earlier this month. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to sign the map into law.

Approval of the new House districts came a month after the US Supreme Court struck down the state's current map as an illegal racial gerrymander, weakening the landmark 1965 federal Voting Rights Act. Republicans now hold four of the state's congressional seats on a court-ordered map drawn in 2024 to comply with the Voting Rights Act by including a second district with a majority-Black population. Landry postponed the state's US House primary, scheduled for May 16, until later this summer to allow time for Republican lawmakers to draw and pass a new map.

Democratic Rep. Kyle Green Jr. said during the debate that cutting majority-Black districts in half reduces representation of Black people in the state from 33% to 16%, per NBC News, adding that they're almost one-third of Louisiana's population. "That's not a map," Green said, "that's a math problem with the moral answer, and the answer is no." The bill's Republican author argued that the map "meets all the traditional redistricting criteria, it's not racially gerrymandered." Sen. Jay Morris added, "I feel like it's going to be very defensible."