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Louisiana Republicans pass new electoral map that guts majority-Black district

May 29, 2026 10 minutes read

a man looking at another person behind a computer — Edmond Jordan, a Democratic Louisiana state representative, talks with fellow lawmakers prior to a Louisiana house vote on a redistricting plan to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on 21 May 2026. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

Louisiana Republicans pass new electoral map that guts majority-Black district

The GOP-friendly map approved by state lawmakers now goes to Republican governor who is expected to sign it

Louisiana Republicans approved a new congressional map on Friday which would eliminate a majority-Black congressional district that was at the center of a landmark supreme court ruling gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The new map reconfigures the state’s sixth congressional district, now represented by Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat. Lawmakers drew the district in 2024 after a court found the map lawmakers enacted after the 2020 census diluted the influence of Black voters and violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The new map will probably give Republicans control of five of Louisiana’s six congressional seats (the previous map had a 4-2 Republican-Democrat split). The bill now goes to Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, who is expected to sign it.

“It does exactly what it was designed to do: consolidate white political power by cracking Black communities apart and drowning their votes in Republican-dominated districts,” said the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed the new map. “The communities targeted by this map – Black voters in Baton Rouge, in Shreveport, along the corridor that Rep. Cleo Fields has represented – did not stay quiet. They showed up at the Capitol in the middle of the night. They testified for hours into the early morning. They made their voices heard at every step of a process designed to minimize their input. That resistance is not over.”

The creation of Fields’s district prompted a lawsuit from a group of white voters in Louisiana, who said that voters were unlawfully sorted by their race. The case, Louisiana v Callais, eventually went to the supreme court, which ruled 6-3 in favor of the plaintiffs. The case set a new, near impossible standard for plaintiffs in Voting Rights Act cases, requiring them to prove intentional discrimination in order to win a redistricting lawsuit.

After the supreme court’s ruling in late April, Landry took the extraordinary step of declaring an emergency to cancel the state’s congressional primary, in which ballots had already gone out. He rescheduled the election to later this year.

Louisiana is one of three Republican-led states in the south that have moved aggressively after the supreme court’s ruling to eliminate majority-Black districts and add Republican-leaning ones. Tennessee and Alabama have also sought to get new maps in place that add Republican-friendly districts.

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15 thoughts on “Louisiana Republicans pass new electoral map that guts majority-Black district”

JustinM says:

May 29, 2026 at 8:42 pm

On one hand louisiana is one of three Republican-led states in the south that have moved aggressively after the supreme court’s ruling to eliminate majority-Black districts and add Republican-leaning ones. But at the same time the GOP-friendly map approved by state lawmakers now goes to Republican governor who is expected to sign.

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HenryF says:

May 29, 2026 at 9:26 pm

So the bottom line is the creation of Fields’s district prompted a lawsuit from a group of white voters in Louisiana, who said that voters were unlawfully sorted by their race. Wonder how this will land.

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CharlotteP says:

May 29, 2026 at 11:00 pm

Cleo Fields has been pushing this agenda for a while now.

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EmilyW says:

May 30, 2026 at 2:45 am

On one hand the new map reconfigures the state’s sixth congressional district, now represented by Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat. But at the same time the creation of Fields’s district prompted a lawsuit from a group of white voters in Louisiana, who said that voters were unlawfully sorted by their race.

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ScottV says:

May 30, 2026 at 2:46 pm

So the bottom line is after the supreme court’s ruling in late April, Landry took the extraordinary step of declaring an emergency to cancel the state’s congressional primary, in which ballots had already gone out. Wonder how this will land.

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BrianH says:

May 30, 2026 at 9:33 pm

The creation of Fields’s district prompted a lawsuit from a group of white voters in Louisiana, who said that voters were unlawfully sorted by their race. Meanwhile after the supreme court’s ruling in late April, Landry took the extraordinary step of declaring an emergency to cancel the state’s congressional primary, in which ballots had already gone out.

Reply
AbigailH says:

May 30, 2026 at 11:26 pm

So the bottom line is the new map reconfigures the state’s sixth congressional district, now represented by Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat. Wonder how this will land.

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RyanT says:

May 31, 2026 at 2:36 am

Think about it: louisiana is one of three Republican-led states in the south that have moved aggressively after the supreme court’s ruling to eliminate majority-Black districts and add Republican-leaning ones. That speaks volumes.

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EthanH says:

May 31, 2026 at 4:41 am

Think about it: the GOP-friendly map approved by state lawmakers now goes to Republican governor who is expected to sign. That speaks volumes.

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EvelynG says:

May 31, 2026 at 4:15 pm

Considering the GOP-friendly map approved by state lawmakers now goes to Republican governor who is expected to sign, it raises some real questions about what happens next.

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AnnaS says:

June 1, 2026 at 11:09 am

The fact that the creation of Fields’s district prompted a lawsuit from a group of white voters in Louisiana, who said that voters were unlawfully sorted by their race really puts things into perspective.

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LauraN says:

June 8, 2026 at 3:44 am

Louisiana Republicans has been pushing this agenda for a while now.

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OliviaM says:

June 13, 2026 at 8:33 am

When you look at louisiana is one of three Republican-led states in the south that have moved aggressively after the supreme court’s ruling to eliminate majority-Black districts and add Republican-leaning ones, the implications are hard to ignore.

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RyanT says:

June 13, 2026 at 10:40 am

After the supreme court’s ruling in late April, Landry took the extraordinary step of declaring an emergency to cancel the state’s congressional primary, in which ballots had already gone out. Meanwhile louisiana is one of three Republican-led states in the south that have moved aggressively after the supreme court’s ruling to eliminate majority-Black districts and add Republican-leaning ones.

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ElijahA says:

June 20, 2026 at 12:49 pm

If the new map reconfigures the state’s sixth congressional district, now represented by Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat, then the bigger picture starts to look very different.

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