BATON ROUGE — The state Senate voted Friday to approve the congressional district map the House had approved Thursday.
The map created by Senate Bill 121 makes it likely that Louisiana will be represented in Congress by five white Republicans and one Black Democrat. Currently, Louisiana has two “majority minority” districts created to increase the chances of Black candidates – who in Louisiana, are almost always Democrats – to get elected.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that the existing maps were unconstitutional because the districts were gerrymandered based on race. Opponents say that ruling gutted the Voting Rights Act, which Congress passed in 1965 to counteract racist and illegal election and voting practices in many Southern states. The decision has thrown congressional elections in several states into chaos.
Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the primary election for U.S. House of Representatives candidates even though tens of thousands of people had already voted via mailed ballots. Candidates and voters filed a federal lawsuit to reverse the governor’s action, but the scheduled May 16 election did not include those offices.
The Supreme Court said district boundaries could not be drawn based primarily on race, but can be drawn to give a partisan advantage. Republicans have a majority in both houses of the legislature.
Sen. Jay Morris, R- West Monroe, who sponsored the bill, has said repeatedly that whatever map lawmakers approved would be challenged in court.
That might happen more quickly than he anticipated. The plaintiffs in the case who went to the Supreme Court, which is called the Callais case after plaintiff Phillip Callais, have filed a motion that indicates that they may ask the federal court to weigh in on whether the new map meets court requirements.
“If the Legislature . . .enacts SB 121 without any substantial changes to the current structure, Plaintiffs may well ask the Court to schedule proceedings to impose a remedy that fully complies with Callais,” the May 26 motion said.
Over several weeks, legislators discussed many potential maps, but ultimately rejected all but the one proposed in SB 121. As part of that process, hundreds of people from around the state went to the Capitol for hearings before House and Senate committees. The Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee meeting lasted nearly 10 hours, wrapping up at 4:30 a.m. The House and Governmental Affairs Committee met for nearly that long and heard from more than 60 people.
The overwhelming majority of people who spoke to the committees opposed SB 121.
The process has included allegations of racism and exchanges between lawmakers so heated that they led to interruptions of the hearings. Sen. Gary Carter, D- New Orleans, took a leave of absence from the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee and apologized to the entire Senate the day after he clashed with Morris committee chair Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter, R- Port Allen.
Morris reportedly got death threats after some of the hearings.
At each stage of the process, the bill was amended slightly. When that happens, the bill has to go back to whichever body had already approved it to see if that group supports the changes.
On Friday, senators remained cordial, but Sen. Royce Duplessis, D- New Orleans, said the existing map is not going to resolve a divisive and expensive problem.
“Y’all, at the beginning of this process, I would have said that we are building a house on a broken foundation,” he said. “Now it feels more like quicksand because we’re in 2026 going into a map that we know is flawed, that we know is going to get struck down, we’re continuing as a state to spend millions of dollars.”
“This is a vicious, vicious race to the bottom,” he said, “and I believe that SB 121 even after these amendments, only accelerates that race to the bottom.”
Morris thanked the members for their work before the vote.
“I appreciate the questions and the debate. It’s been a long time,” he said. “I think we have a map here that is meets all the traditional redistricting criteria. It’s not racially gerrymandered.”
Senators voted 28-10 to pass the bill.
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