Louisiana GOP eliminates majority-Black district after Supreme Court weakens Voting Rights Act

Louisiana Republicans approved a congressional map on May 29, 2026 that eliminates one of the state's two majority-Black districts, replacing it with a Republican-leaning district. The map is expected to yield five Republicans and one Democrat in the U.S. House, compared to the previous four Republicans and two Democrats. This was made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court's April 2026 ruling in *Callais v. Landry*, which severely weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it much harder to challenge racial gerrymanders. The map preserves only one majority-Black district snaking from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, concentrating Black voters into a single seat while diluting their influence elsewhere.

Black Louisianans comprise roughly one-third of the state's population; under the old map, they had two congressional seats representing their interests. The new map reduces that to one, effectively nullifying proportional representation. The process was rushed through the legislature — passed just days before early voting began for the 2026 midterms — with multiple confrontations, including the removal of a Black woman from the House gallery for protesting. Democratic state Sen. Royce Duplessis called the map "quicksand," predicting it would be challenged but acknowledging that the Supreme Court's new precedent leaves few legal remedies.

The mechanism here is straightforward: a conservative judicial majority changed the legal standard for racial vote dilution, and Louisiana's GOP legislature immediately exploited it to entrench partisan advantage. The harm is not abstract — it disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of Black voters by diluting their collective electoral voice, perpetuating a cycle of underrepresentation that has defined Southern politics since Reconstruction.