Two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana illegally considered race in drawing its 6th Congressional District, the state’s Republican-led Senate on Thursday approved a replacement map that would dismantle that district and likely add a GOP seat to the state’s House delegation. The plan, passed along party lines, converts the district now held by Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields — a sprawling, 200-mile corridor that connects Baton Rouge to Shreveport and has a majority of Black residents — into a compact, predominantly white district centered on the Baton Rouge area and southern Louisiana. It keeps a New Orleans-based majority-Black district represented by Rep. Troy Carter, adding part of Baton Rouge to it, and largely mirrors the map used in 2022 that elected five Republicans and one Democrat.
Republican state Sen. Jay Morris acknowledged the partisan aim, telling colleagues that “these maps are drawn to maximize Republican advantage for the incumbent Republicans that we have in Congress.” He said the new lines pack Democrats into Carter’s 2nd District to allow Republicans to prevail in the remaining seats.
Democratic state Sen. Sam Jenkins accused Republicans of “using partisanship as cover for discriminatory practices against a group of people, particularly Black voters and Democrats.” The exchange grew testy when Jenkins said, “If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck,” drawing a reply from Morris: “It’s not quacking.”
“It’s quacking pretty loud, it’s quacking all over the state,” Jenkins replied.
The Senate rejected a Democratic alternative that would have preserved two Democratic-leaning districts. Louisiana Senate President Cameron Henry, a Republican, said lawmakers opted not to pursue a 6-0 GOP map because it was infeasible.
The redistricting scramble was triggered by an April 29 Supreme Court ruling that Louisiana’s existing districts relied too heavily on race. The decision was the latest turn in a yearslong legal battle: a federal judge had initially struck down the state’s 2022 map for violating the Voting Rights Act; after the Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that Alabama had to create a second largely Black district, Louisiana adopted a revision for the 2024 elections that created Fields’ district. That map was then challenged, culminating in last month’s high court ruling.
Hours after the ruling, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry postponed the state’s U.S. House primaries, which were scheduled for Saturday. A bill given final legislative approval Wednesday would shift the elections to an open primary on Nov. 3, with a runoff Dec. 12 if no candidate wins a majority. A new candidate qualifying period would run Aug. 5-7. More than 250,000 votes already cast would be canceled and shielded from public records. Rep. Beau Beaullieu, the bill’s Republican sponsor, said there would not be enough time to conduct closed party primaries before the general election. A closed primary remains in place for the state’s U.S. Senate race, in which Sen. Bill Cassidy faces a Trump-backed challenge from Rep. Julia Letlow.
The push to redraw maps extends beyond Louisiana. In South Carolina, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster called a special session beginning Friday to take up redistricting. House Majority Leader Davey Hiott told reporters the work “will be long. It will be boring. It will be confrontational” and said the chamber could finish the bill next week. It would move the state’s June 9 congressional primaries to August, with the early voting window beginning May 26 serving as the effective deadline.
The proposal faces a skeptical state Senate, where Judiciary Committee Chairman Luke Rankin has said he will “demand the process” without elaborating. Only one of South Carolina’s seven House seats is held by a Democrat — longtime Rep. Jim Clyburn — and some Republicans are worried that drawing seven safe GOP districts is impossible in a state where Democratic presidential candidates have routinely received more than 40% of the vote. State election officials have also raised concerns about holding two statewide elections in little more than two months, saying it may require round-the-clock work.
President Trump has publicly encouraged Republican-led states to redraw congressional boundaries to their advantage, according to wire reports. Republicans believe they could net as many as 15 additional House seats from new maps in seven states; Democrats think they could gain up to six seats from two other states. But Democrats in Virginia will not pick up the four seats they had hoped for. The office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger confirmed Thursday that the state will hold this year’s elections under its current districts as it appeals a Virginia Supreme Court ruling invalidating a voter-approved amendment that would have authorized new maps.