Louisiana Republican senators advanced Wednesday a plan to redraw U.S. House districts after a U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander, setting off additional state-level efforts to alter minority voting districts ahead of the November midterms. The state action came as Georgia’s governor announced steps to reshape legislative district lines for the 2028 election cycle, underscoring how quickly lawmakers are responding to the court’s ruling and to ongoing litigation over voting maps.
The changes follow the Supreme Court’s weakening of the federal Voting Rights Act’s protections in the context of district-drawing, with Republicans in multiple states moving to dismantle majority-minority districts that have elected Democrats. Since the Louisiana case, Tennessee and Alabama have already implemented House maps that could benefit Republicans, while a similar effort in South Carolina’s Senate on Tuesday did not succeed and may still continue.
Democrats and Republicans are now preparing their own map-making strategies for the upcoming election cycle. The redistricting dispute has involved about one-third of the states over roughly 10 months and gained speed after President Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to redraw House districts in an effort to win more seats in the midterm elections. Democrats in California responded with new districts, and other Republican-leaning states have redistricted since then.
Republicans said they could gain as many as 15 seats based on new House maps in states including Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama, while Democrats projected they could gain six seats through maps in California and Utah. Democrats pointed to other ongoing court fights as well, including a Virginia Supreme Court decision that struck down a redistricting effort Democrats said could have produced four additional winnable seats.
In Georgia, Kemp’s proclamation called a special legislative session to begin June 17, one day after runoffs will determine party nominees for the November elections. Kemp said he does not want to change Georgia’s voting districts for the current year because ballots had already been cast for the Tuesday first round of primaries. The proclamation covers not only congressional districts but also Georgia’s state Senate and state House lines, a move that officials said could help Republicans avoid the scenario of waiting until Georgia’s regular legislative session next year if a Democrat wins the governor’s race in November and vetoes new voting districts.
Georgia’s congressional delegation includes five Black Democrats, and Republicans are likely to focus on how district boundaries could affect seats held by Democrats such as U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop in southwest Georgia and members representing parts of the Atlanta area. Kemp’s proclamation, by allowing lawmakers to redraw boundaries ahead of 2028, also gives Republicans a path to potentially cluster or reshape districts without waiting for the 2029 cycle, court conditions, or a change in statehouse leadership.
Louisiana’s push centers on a new House map advanced by a redistricting committee that the Louisiana Senate could vote on Thursday. The plan would keep a New Orleans-based, majority-Black district represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Troy Carter while also including a portion of Baton Rouge. It would significantly reshape the district currently represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, the 6th District, which under the existing map snakes from the Baton Rouge area northwest to Shreveport to create a second majority-Black seat.
Fields, a Baton Rouge resident, said he would not decide whether to seek reelection until the maps are finalized and that he would not challenge Carter in a primary. “I’ve said from day one, I have no interest in running against Troy Carter. Period,” Fields told The Associated Press. “The real issue is not whether I serve another second in Congress. The real issue is whether or not a person like me will have the opportunity to serve in Congress.”
State Sen. Jay Morris, a Republican who sponsored the revised map, said the new districts are very similar to those used in 2022, when five Republicans and one Democrat won elections. The history of Louisiana’s map has moved through multiple court steps since then: a federal judge struck down the 2022 map for violating the Voting Rights Act, and in 2023 the U.S. Supreme Court required Alabama to create its own second largely Black congressional district, which shaped subsequent map decisions in other states as well.
After the Alabama ruling, the Louisiana Legislature passed a revised map in 2023 that created a second majority-Black district used in the 2024 elections, but that map was again challenged. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s districts relied too heavily on race, and it also overturned a judicial order requiring Alabama to use a House map with two largely Black congressional districts.
Louisiana’s legislative and election timing also shifted as lawmakers sought to incorporate new district boundaries before primaries. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry postponed Louisiana’s scheduled Saturday U.S. House primaries until either July 15 or a date to be determined by the Legislature to allow time for new districts to be put in place.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock said Wednesday he would oppose the effort, writing, “There is an extreme movement in this country that will stop at nothing to hold on to power, even if it means stripping representation away from millions,” in an online post. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves in Mississippi, meanwhile, called off a special legislative session planned for next week that would have redrawn Mississippi Supreme Court districts, though he said lawmakers would still redraw the state’s congressional, legislative and Supreme Court districts before the 2027 elections.
Reeves said in a social media post that there was no longer an immediate need to redraw the Supreme Court districts. The plan had been driven by a federal judge’s ruling that the existing map violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voters’ power, and it faced further procedural change after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Louisiana case and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturning the earlier ruling, sending the case back for further argument.
Sources: Amy reported from Atlanta, Bates from Jackson, Mississippi, and Lieb from Jefferson City, Missouri.