The U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana has rippled through midterm politics, reshaping the legal and political timetable for redistricting in states where governors and legislatures are trying to redraw U.S. House maps and related election plans. Republican officials in several states said the decision created new room to change how congressional districts are drawn before November, when control of the closely divided House is at stake.
Across the states highlighted in the Associated Press report, the common thread has been speed and legal maneuvering as court deadlines and primary calendars collide. Some Republican governors moved to convene special sessions or to adjust election timing, while Democrats and voting-rights advocates filed lawsuits seeking to block orders and preserve existing maps or schedules.
In Louisiana, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry moved quickly after the Supreme Court decision, postponing the congressional primary that had been set to begin Saturday for the state’s U.S. House races while elections for other offices continued. A federal lawsuit filed later Thursday, brought on behalf of a Democratic congressional candidate and voters, asked a court to block Landry’s order and keep the House primary on the original schedule. Two additional lawsuits were filed Friday in state court for voters who had already cast absentee ballots, along with several civil rights organizations; they argued Landry lacked authority to suspend the primary and that thousands of absentee ballots had already been mailed, with a substantial number filled out and returned. District court judges in Baton Rouge late Friday denied requests in two cases to temporarily block Landry’s executive order, and a separate three-judge federal panel issued an order Thursday suspending the congressional primary in the case appealed to the Supreme Court.
The same push for action has extended beyond Louisiana’s primary calendar. Republican state House and Senate leaders said they were prepared to pass new U.S. House districts and set a new primary election date before their legislative session ends in a month. The plan has also been challenged in court, with the legal fight centered on whether the governor had authority to suspend the primary and on how election administration should proceed given ballots already in circulation.
In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey announced a special legislative session designed to begin Monday, seeking to create a contingency plan that would allow Alabama to hold special primary elections if the Supreme Court acts quickly enough to allow previously drawn districts to be used this year. Alabama’s primaries are scheduled for May 19, but officials filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking expedited review of a pending redistricting appeal that could affect the election. In 2023, a federal court ordered the creation of a near majority-Black district, resulting in the election of a second Black representative to the U.S. House, and Alabama has been under a court order to use the new map until after the next census in 2030. Alabama is seeking to lift an injunction blocking the use of a 2023 map drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature that did not include the new district, and it requested similar relief regarding two state Senate districts affected by a separate redistricting case.
Florida’s Republican-led Legislature approved new U.S. House districts hours after the Supreme Court’s decision, with Gov. Ron DeSantis calling a special legislative session even though he did not know when the court would issue its opinion in the Louisiana case. DeSantis said he was confident the court would rule as it did, and state officials said the new map reshaped a southeastern Florida district that DeSantis described as created to help elect a Black representative in an attempt to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act. A Florida constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2010 prohibits districts from being drawn to deny or diminish the ability of racial or language minorities to elect representatives of their choice, and DeSantis said he considers that amendment a violation of the U.S. Constitution; that dispute is expected to be decided in court.
Tennessee moved on a separate track, with Gov. Bill Lee announcing a special legislative session late Friday afternoon. In his statement, Lee said, “We owe it to Tennesseans to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters.” The announcement followed what the report described as a pressure campaign by Trump and other Republicans aimed at reconfiguring Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, which Democrats have held as the state’s one Democratic-held House seat centered on Memphis. The candidate qualifying period ended in March, and the primary election is scheduled for Aug. 6. Democrats pointed to prior court scrutiny, noting that in 2022 the state supreme court checked additional redistricting because it was too close to an election, and they said the court is their best hope this time around as well. At a news conference outside the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Democratic State Sen. Ramesh Akbari said, “We cannot keep doing things like this and calling ourselves a democracy,” in a setting that includes the structure of the motel where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
The legal scramble also includes other states adjusting plans in response to the ruling’s implications for voting-district requirements. Mississippi held its U.S. House primaries in March, and Gov. Tate Reeves had already said he would call a special legislative session to redraw voting districts for the state’s Supreme Court, starting 21 days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Louisiana case, a timeline that would place the session’s start around May 20. Reeves’s proclamation said the decision would provide guidance on whether “race-conscious redistricting” violates the U.S. Constitution, after a federal judge last year ordered Mississippi to redraw its Supreme Court voting districts for violating the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters. Georgia, meanwhile, is facing its own calendar constraints: Georgia’s primary elections are May 19, early in-person voting began April 27, and Gov. Brian Kemp said it was too late to try to change congressional districts for this year’s elections because voting was already underway, but he said the reasoning in the Supreme Court’s decision “requires Georgia to adopt new electoral maps before the 2028 election cycle.”