Louisiana committee advances map to erase majority-Black district

Louisiana's 6th Congressional District exists because Black voters spent a decade fighting in federal court. Black residents make up roughly 33 percent of Louisiana's population, yet for most of the state's modern history they held just one of six congressional seats. After the Supreme Court ruled in Allen v. Milligan (2023) that states must draw majority-Black districts where the population is large and geographically compact enough to support one, Louisiana lawmakers in January 2024 passed a new map creating a second majority-Black seat — the 6th District, which stretches from Caddo Parish in the northwest to East Baton Rouge Parish. Rep. Cleo Fields, a Baton Rouge Democrat, won the seat in November 2024.

That map lasted less than two years. On April 29, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Louisiana v. Callais that the 6th District was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Justice Samuel Alito — appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed 58-42 — wrote for the majority that Louisiana relied too heavily on race in drawing the second majority-Black district. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson dissented. Justice Kagan wrote that the majority had rendered Section 2 of the 📖Voting Rights Act .

Three weeks after the Callais ruling, the Louisiana Republican majority moved to redraw the map on its own terms. Sen. Jay Morris (R-West Monroe) introduced Senate Bill 121, which creates five Republican-leaning districts and one Democratic district — the 2nd Congressional District held by Rep. Troy Carter, centered on New Orleans. Morris said at a hearing that his goal was straightforward: 'I'm 📖redistricting on the basis of partisanship.' He also said the map was designed to 'maximize Republican advantage for the incumbent Republicans that we have in Congress.'

Morris presented the bill without the usual voter demographic breakdowns that accompany 📖redistricting legislation, substituting party-affiliation data instead. Democratic senators argued the substitution was cosmetic. Sen. Cleo Fields' seat would disappear entirely: under SB121, his district would be dissolved and its territory merged into majority-white Republican-leaning districts.

The Louisiana Senate passed SB121 on May 14, 2026, by a . The bill went to the House and Governmental Affairs Committee, which held a hearing on May 21 featuring hours of public opposition. Marc Morial — National Urban League president and former New Orleans mayor — told the committee: 'This state was on an arc of change. What this moment feels like to me right now is a reversal of progress.' Former New Orleans Mayor Sidney Barthelemy and former Orleans Parish Clerk of Criminal Court Arthur Morrell also testified against the bill.

Despite the opposition, the committee voted to advance SB121 with a House committee amendment. The bill still needs a full House floor vote and, if both chambers pass the same version, a signature from Gov. Jeff Landry.

Rep. Cleo Fields called the Republican 📖redistricting effort 'personal.' Fields noted that it took Louisiana more than a century after Reconstruction before the state elected a Black person to Congress — a milestone he himself achieved when he was first elected in 1992 at age 26. Under SB121, he would have no district to run in. Fields said he won't run against fellow Democrat Troy Carter even if the final map places them in the same district.

The Callais ruling gave Republicans the legal opening they needed, but the racial composition of Louisiana's congressional delegation is a direct consequence of the new map. ; under SB121, Black voters would hold the ability to elect a preferred candidate in just one of six congressional seats. 📖Redistricting experts have said the combination of Callais and state legislative action could produce the largest drop in Black congressional representation since Reconstruction.

The constitutional history of Louisiana's 6th District runs through two decades of litigation. In Robinson v. Landry (the predecessor to the Callais case), federal courts ruled that the 2022 congressional map — drawn by Republicans to create a single majority-Black district — violated Section 2 of the 📖Voting Rights Act. The state was ordered to draw a second majority-Black seat. Republicans challenged the court-ordered map, and the Supreme Court took up the case as Louisiana v. Callais.

The Callais ruling went beyond striking Louisiana's map. Justice Alito's majority opinion significantly reworked the 40-year-old Thornburg v. Gingles framework that governed Section 2 vote-dilution claims. Challengers must now prove current-day intentional racial discrimination — a much higher bar — and must draw alternative maps that satisfy the state's political objectives just as well as the state's own map. The called the new standard 'all but impossible to meet' when racial identity and party affiliation overlap as closely as they do in Louisiana.

Republicans have a partisan interest in the map's outcome that extends beyond Louisiana. Going into the 2026 midterm elections, the House Republican majority is narrow and competitive. Each seat matters. Gov. Jeff Landry suspended Louisiana's ongoing congressional primary elections to allow the 📖redistricting to proceed, an unusual executive action that delayed candidate filings for the 2026 cycle. If SB121 becomes law and Fields' seat is eliminated, Republicans would hold five of Louisiana's six U.S. House seats instead of four.

The national 📖redistricting landscape shifted sharply after Callais. Tennessee Republicans drew and passed a new map eliminating the state's sole 📖majority-minority district within weeks of the ruling. 📖Redistricting advocates have documented similar efforts in multiple Southern states. The called the combination of the Callais ruling and subsequent state legislative action a coordinated strategy to consolidate Republican control of the House before the 2026 midterms.

The NAACP and ACLU have both condemned the Callais ruling and the Louisiana 📖redistricting that followed it. NAACP President Derrick Johnson said: 'This ruling is a major setback for our nation and threatens to erode the hard-won victories we've fought, bled, and died for.' The ACLU warned that '📖redistricting remains ongoing in many states, and the severe weakening of Section 2 may affect future challenges to congressional, legislative, and local maps that dilute the voting strength of communities of color.'

Democracy Docket, the voting rights litigation tracker, described SB121 as a 'GOP gerrymander' and noted that the bill's passage would effectively ratify the use of the Callais ruling as a under the guise of complying with the Constitution.

For Black Louisianans, the 📖redistricting fight is not abstract. Louisiana has a long history of suppressing Black political power — from poll taxes and grandfather clauses in the Jim Crow era to modern litigation over district lines. The Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, a Louisiana voting rights group, documented to Black congressional representation in federal court records. Under SB121, Black voters in the Baton Rouge and Shreveport regions — previously linked in the 6th District — would be split among Republican-majority districts, diluting their collective voting strength.

Marc Morial told the House committee that Louisiana was 'on an arc of change' before the Callais ruling. His testimony — alongside dozens of other speakers who opposed the bill — went into the record before the 10-7 vote advanced SB121 to the full House floor.

The legal options for challenging SB121 have narrowed significantly after Callais. Section 2 of the 📖Voting Rights Act, the primary statutory tool for challenging discriminatory maps, now requires proof of intentional racial discrimination under the Alito majority's new framework. The Campaign Legal Center that 'with a severely narrowed Section 2, voters challenging racially discriminatory maps and voting laws will face higher legal barriers and fewer statutory protections.'

The 14th and 15th Amendments remain available as constitutional bases for a challenge, but the Supreme Court's Callais holding found the Louisiana map unconstitutional precisely on those grounds — meaning challengers would have to show that SB121 goes further than what Callais permits, a difficult argument given that the Republican majority's stated goal is a purely partisan map.