Verite News: Louisiana has a new majority-Black congressional district. Here’s what you need to know.
by Michelle Liu | September 16, 2024
Louisiana’s congressional delegation will see a shake-up this fall as voters in the newly drawn, majority-Black 6th district head to the polls.
U.S. Rep. Garret Graves of Baton Rouge, a Republican who has represented the 6th district since 2015, isn’t running for reelection after state lawmakers redrew the bounds of his district. The state’s new congressional map shifts the demographics of the 6th district from a whiter, Republican stronghold based in south Baton Rouge and its suburbs to a mostly Black district that spans from north Baton Rouge to Shreveport.
For the first time since the 1990s, the state has two majority-Black congressional districts, and Louisiana could soon send one more Democrat to the U.S. House.
But the map — the fruit of a hard-won battle by civil rights groups representing Black voters in the state — might not last beyond this election cycle. The state’s redistricting efforts following the 2020 census have been mired in litigation, and the U.S. Supreme Court could take up a challenge to the current map next year.
Verite News spoke with experts to understand what stakes this map and the legal implications surrounding it have for upcoming elections in the state.
Why did Louisiana redraw its congressional maps?
Like other states, Louisiana reassesses its election maps after every census. Following the 2020 census, lawmakers had to account for an increase in the state’s Black population and a decrease in the state’s white population. The 2020 census found that Black people made up about 31% of the state, roughly about the same percentage as in 2010. But only 57.1% of people in 2020 indicated they were white, compared to 62.6% in 2010.
Republican state lawmakers finished drawing the state’s map in 2022, retaining a single majority-Black district out of six. The legislature overrode a veto from then-Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, who said the map was “simply not fair to the people of Louisiana.”
A group of Black voters and civil rights groups then sued the state, arguing the map watered down the voting power of Black Louisianians, violating Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act. The plaintiffs in that suit said the state needed two majority-Black congressional districts to give Black voters an equal chance to elect candidates of their choice.
“Louisiana is one-third Black. We have six congressional seats. And one-third of six is two,” said Jared Evans with the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, one of the firms representing plaintiffs. “That’s simple math.”
That case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Louisiana redistricting officials and voters contesting the congressional map also kept an eye on a similar legal challenge unfolding simultaneously in Alabama — where Republicans had drawn just one majority-Black district out of seven — anticipating a ruling that would end up applying to both states.
In 2023, the Supreme Court rejected the Alabama map, requiring Alabama to draw a second majority-Black district.
And after a three-judge panel at the 5th Circuit appeals court deemed Louisiana’s initial map likely in violation of the Voting Rights Act and set a January 2024 deadline for a new map, Louisiana lawmakers went back to the drawing board.
The map ultimately hammered out by lawmakers and signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry in January included two majority-Black districts. One is the 2nd Congressional District, which spans from Iberville Parish east toward parts of Orleans Parish and is currently represented by Troy Carter. The other is the newly drawn 6th district.
Why did Louisiana Republicans choose to reshape Garret Graves’ district?
U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, chose not to run for reelection after the 6th district was redrawn. Credit: Official photo / U.S. House of Representatives
The new version of the 6th district cuts diagonally across the state, “meandering…up the Red River from Baton Rouge to Shreveport,” said Peter Robins-Brown of Louisiana Progress, a policy-focused advocacy group that has worked to educate Louisianians on redistricting.
Louisiana had other, simpler ways to draw a second majority-Black district, Robins-Brown noted.
One such map would have altered the 5th district, represented by Republican Julia Letlow, into a majority-minority district anchored in Baton Rouge. This map, offered by plaintiffs in the suit challenging the 2022 congressional boundaries, would have created a relatively compact, rough rectangle along the Mississippi River with Baton Rouge, Monroe, Opelousas and the northeastern edge of the state as the corners, Evans said.
But it wasn’t a coincidence that Republicans ultimately chose a map that dismantles Graves’ district while protecting other incumbents. Graves has alienated some of Louisiana’s most powerful Republicans in recent years, most notably with his endorsement of Stephen Waguespack over Landry in the 2023 governor’s race and his rumored attempt at derailing U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise’s bid for speaker of the U.S. House.
“So this map accomplished our goal, which was get a second majority-Black congressional district, but also accomplished the goal of Jeff Landry, which was to punish Garret Graves in not supporting him in his bid for governor,” Evans said.
Will the boundaries of this new district stick?
Perhaps not. At the end of January, a group of 11 non-Black voters challenged Louisiana’s new map. In that case, Callais v. Landry, the voters claim the new map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
That argument harkens back to the 1990s, observed Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. In that decade, states began creating majority-Black and majority-Latino districts in the South and white voters began challenging them. That includes Louisiana, where a second majority-Black district created in the 1990s in an attempt to abide by the Voting Rights Act was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court.
In the 2010 redistricting cycle, voters of color began challenging districts using racial gerrymandering claims, culminating in a Supreme Court case that ultimately determined that race couldn’t be used as a “crude tool” for advancing political goals in map-drawing, Li said.
“But this new Louisiana case is sort of a return to the origins of racial gerrymandering,” Li said.
Now, mapmakers must find a balance between taking race into account and predominantly relying on it to define district boundaries.
Li believes Black voters and the state have a strong claim in the current challenge to the Louisiana map, but given the conservative makeup of the Supreme Court, the ultimate outcome remains unknown for now.
“Anytime you go up to a very conservative Supreme Court, a lot of Black voters are probably holding their breath, right? Because this is a court that sometimes takes wild swings,” Li said. “You know you have a strong case, but … you don’t quite ever know with this court, right? And that’s the danger.”
Who’s in the running for the 6th district?
State Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, is considered a top contender to represent the new congressional district. Credit: Official state Senate photo / Louisiana State Senate
Four Democrats and one Republican have qualified in the race to represent the newly drawn district. All of the candidates are Black.
The contender with the highest profile is State Sen. Cleo Fields, a Democrat who previously represented Louisiana’s 4th congressional district from 1993 to 1997 — when the state last had two majority-Black districts. Fields’s district was tossed out by the U.S. Supreme Court after a set of white voters challenged its boundaries as an instance of racial gerrymandering.
The other three Democrats are: Quentin Anthony Anderson of Baton Rouge; Wilken Jones Jr. of Opelousas; and Peter Williams of Baton Rouge.
The sole Republican, Elbert Guillory, is a former Louisiana state Senator from Opelousas who switched his party affiliation and sided with Democrats during his 2007 run for the state House before returning to the Republican Party in 2013.
In Louisiana’s other majority-Black congressional district, the 2nd, incumbent U.S. Rep. Troy Carter is running against fellow Democrat Devin Davis. There are also three Republicans in the race: Devin Graham, Christy Lynch and Shondrell Perrilloux.
The election for Louisiana’s congressional elections is Nov. 4, with a runoff election scheduled for Dec. 7 should no single candidate capture a majority of the vote.
What’s on the horizon for Louisiana’s congressional map?
Li, the Brennan Center redistricting expert, said he expects that oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the current challenge to Louisiana’s map probably won’t take place until the October 2025 term, with the high court making a decision sometime before June 2026.
If the Supreme Court deems the map unconstitutional, that decision likely wouldn’t come out with enough time for lawmakers to draw a new map before the 2026 congressional elections, suggesting Louisiana will use the current map in that next cycle whatever the court decides, Li said.
If the Supreme Court affirms the current map, it would stick for another few cycles — 2028 and 2030 — before the state starts all over again, redrawing its boundaries for state legislative and congressional seats following the 2030 census.
“For the time being, this problem of misrepresentation has been mostly remedied,” Robins-Brown said. “As far as we know, this might be the only election cycle where this remedy might be in place. That makes this election even more important for people to get out and vote. Especially for Black and brown folks, who have been denied a full and fair voice, this is an even more important election in that sense.”
What other redistricting battles are going on in Louisiana?
The maps for Louisiana’s state House and Senate seats have also been in contention this redistricting cycle. Black voters and civil rights groups also challenged those maps in 2022.
Federal Judge Shelly Dick, the same U.S. district judge who first held that the state needed two majority-Black congressional districts, has also ruled that Louisiana should have three additional majority-Black state Senate seats and six additional majority-Black state House seats. The case has been appealed to the 5th Circuit, which has yet to take any action on the litigation.
The voting rights groups ultimately want the state to hold a special election using the new maps before the 2027 regular election for statehouse seats.
Similar litigation dating back to 2019 over the the boundaries of Louisiana’s state Supreme Court districts was resolved earlier this year after Gov. Jeff Landry signed a bill establishing two majority-Black districts. Previously, the state had only had one majority-Black state Supreme Court district out of seven.
