Louisiana Redistricting Chaos Follows Supreme Court Ruling on Racial Gerrymander

Protests broke out at statehouses this past week as Republicans and Democrats rushed to draw new congressional maps ahead of November's midterm elections. The fight for House control has turned the normally obscure process into a political battleground.

A Supreme Court decision 11 days ago declared Louisiana's congressional map unconstitutional because legislators relied too heavily on race. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and his party moved quickly to redraw districts. Black voters in Shreveport expressed fears that their district would disappear.

At a town hall in Galilee Baptist Church on Monday, constituents questioned the fate of their district. Their congressman, Democrat Cleo Fields, offered few answers. "Sometimes you get a setback to be set up," Fields said. "Don't underestimate that power of the vote. That's what they are trying to take away."

Fields, first elected to the House in 1992, has faced repeated redistricting fights. He called it highly unlikely he would keep his seat if maps change. "I'm just occupying the seat," he said. "When there's a voting rights seat created it guarantees a Black an election? No. It doesn't guarantee a Black anything. It just gives a Black an opportunity to win an election. And that's why they even passed the Voting Rights Act."

The 1965 Voting Rights Act protects minority voting power. Louisiana has about 30 percent Black residents, one of the highest rates in the country, but no Black politician has won a congressional seat in a majority-white district. The Supreme Court ruling weakened the law, though Fields argued it remains vital in the South.

The 6th District runs more than 200 miles from Baton Rouge to Shreveport. Chief Justice John Roberts described it during arguments as "a snake that runs from one side of the state angling up to the other, picking up Black populations as it goes along." Non-African American voters challenged the map under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. The court ruled it an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

Gerrymandering, named after Elbridge Gerry's salamander-shaped district, redraws lines to favor the party in power and is legal. Fields agreed the 6th District looks like a snake. He noted this Congress has 63 Black members, a record, but said Louisiana voters still reject Black candidates in some cases. "You tell me I have to jump a certain height, that's the rule, I can work to do that," he said. "But if you tell me in order to be elected to Congress you have to be White, there's nothing I can do about that. I need help from my government."

On Tuesday, Gov. Landry met reporters at the governor's mansion. A Trump ally and former attorney general, he won office in 2023. "You cannot say that we are all created equal and that states must treat everyone equal under the law and then allow a law to sort people based upon race," Landry said.

After the ruling, Landry declared a state of emergency, suspended congressional primaries as voting began, and ordered a do-over. More than 45,000 ballots were returned and will be discarded. Voters will cast new ballots in November. "We've got the highest court in the land says the map that you have is unconstitutional, so we don't have a map under which our voters can vote on," Landry said.

Landry wants Louisiana free from decades of redistricting litigation. He said the legislature decides representation and rejected drawing districts to guarantee minority seats. "In the United States, we get equal rights. No one gets extra rights," he added.

Redistricting typically follows Census data each decade. Last summer, Trump urged Texas Republicans to redraw maps for midterm gains. California Gov. Gavin Newsom countered with a plan for Democratic seats. Protests hit statehouses in Tennessee and Alabama this week.

Georgetown Law professor Stephen Vladeck said map drawers face no legal duty to protect minority political power. "Instead of once every ten years per the Constitution, states saying, 'Oh, we gotta redraw our maps 'cause we have more data about who our people are,' now it's, 'Let's redraw our maps whenever it's to our partisan political advantage to do so,'" he said.

Landry denied Trump directed the redraw and dismissed racism claims. "Barack Obama was elected twice as the United States president," he said. "Are we really trying to drug up the past only to continue a failed narrative?" No Black candidate has won statewide office in Louisiana since Reconstruction.

Shreveport residents Pastor Timothy Hunter, Linda Scott, and Donnie Sutton worried the changes dilute Black votes. "This Republican Congress is all about making America Jim Crow again," Hunter said. "There's no more checks and balances."

"You can't separate politics from race in this district," Sutton said. Scott added, "We've come a long ways, but not with this when it comes to race and not with the schemes that they're putting up before us." Landry invoked Martin Luther King: "Judge a person based upon the content of their character rather than the color of their skin."