(The Center Square) — Louisiana is only one step away from electing the U.S. House delegation under a newly redrawn congressional map that is likely to shift one seat toward Republicans after months of legal uncertainty over the state’s district lines.
The map now heads back to the Senate, which must affirm or reject the amendments adopted in the House. The Legislautre is scheduled to adjourn on Monday.
The state currently has two Democrats in Congress: Reps. Troy Carter of New Orleans and Cleo Fields of Baton Rouge. The new map likely means there will be only one after the next election this November.
That will not happen immediately when the map becomes law. Both members remain in office through the end of their current terms, which expire in January of 2027. The reduction would come through the November election.
Under the new map, Carter’s New Orleans-based 2nd District would remain the state’s lone majority-Black, Democratic-leaning district, while Fields’ current 6th District would be redrawn into a more Republican-friendly seat. Fields will not run as a challenger to Carter.
The map that is now law changed significantly from the map originally proposed by Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, but mostly around the edges, not in its overall political effect.
Both versions keep one Democratic-leaning district, District 2, and five Republican-leaning districts. The newest House version makes smaller swaps among parishes and precincts in southeast Louisiana, Acadiana and southwest Louisiana, including changes around Orleans, Jefferson, Terrebonne, Calcasieu, St. Martin and the Baton Rouge area.
Current U.S. Congressman Clay Higgins, R-Lafayette, took to social media while the final map was being debated with scorching disapproval, calling it “the worst iteration of proposed Louisiana Congressional Districts.”
“This Frankenstein looking thing was NO DOUBT drawn up by a very small handful of guys in a secret room,” Higgins said.
Democrats in both chambers tried unsuccessfully to preserve a second Democratic-leaning district. In all, lawmakers rejected four Democratic amendments from members who argued the Legislature could draw a map that kept two Democratic-leaning districts while still meeting the standards laid out by the U.S. Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais.
Rep. Kyle Green, D-New Orleans, chair of the Louisiana Democratic Caucus, said the Republican argument that the map was based on politics rather than race was artificial.
“The distinction between partisan gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering is a distinction without a difference,” Green said. “It is a fiction.”
“The argument that we should now be colorblind about a congressional map — in this state, of all states — requires forgetting a history that none of us has the right to forget,” Green continued.
The map that passed is likely to be challenged from both sides. As previously reported by The Center Square, Democrats intend to challenge in court any map that doesn’t have two Democrat leaning districts. Another challenge is already filed that claims the new map still constitutes a racial gerrymander because it keeps one of the majority-Black districts.
“As sponsor Senator Morris has testified, SB121 is meant to emulate the 2022 map and the 2011 map, which was pre-cleared by the DOJ and intentionally created a majority-Black district—District 2,” a court filing reads. “None of the minor modifications to SB121 have removed these racial markers from District 2. Although the record is not yet complete, there is reason to believe that SB121 does not fully comply with the Supreme Court’s Callais decision.”
