The sweep and impact of the Supreme Court\u2019s decision on the Voting Rights Act may remain uncertain, but the one state clearly affected, Louisiana, faces a very short window to redraw its congressional maps for 2026.<\/p>\n
Early voting is set to begin on Saturday, ahead of a May 16 primary date that has captured national attention, as Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican who voted in 2021 to convict President Trump after his second impeachment, tries to stave off two challengers from his right.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court\u2019s 6-3 decision on Wednesday that Louisiana lawmakers had illegally used race to draw a new majority-Black House district in 2024 appeared unambiguous about the state\u2019s current map. But it came four days before the first ballots in Louisiana were to be cast.<\/p>\n
Nancy Landry, the secretary of state, said that her office\u2019s lawyers were reviewing the opinion. The state\u2019s attorney general, Liz Murrill, said on Wednesday she believed the Legislature had time to act on a new map. But, she told reporters, \u201cObviously, those are decisions that need to be made very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Louisiana is one of the few states whose legislature is still in session, and a handful of bills had pre-emptively been filed that would allow for a new congressional map to be debated and approved.<\/p>\n
But Representative Cleo Fields, a Democrat whose district was at the center of the ruling, warned against moving to redraw the maps ahead of the November elections. He pledged \u201cto evaluate all available legislative responses to this ruling and to restore the full protections,\u201d an indication that any quick move to draw him out of the House would yield a court challenge.<\/p>\n
What happens next is not clear. A spokeswoman for Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about quick redistricting, though in a statement, the governor did say, \u201cThe Supreme Court has affirmed what we have said for years: Drawing districts for political reasons is the states\u2019 prerogative, not a federal civil-rights violation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond Mr. Fields\u2019s district, Republicans could also move to dilute the state\u2019s other majority-Black district, a New Orleans-area seat held by Representative Troy Carter, a Democrat.<\/p>\n
Mr. Carter acknowledged \u201cthey may\u201d try to redraw the map in the coming days. But he guessed that doing so in Louisiana may not be possible with elections so near.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe governor has made it very clear that he\u2019s in lock step with President Trump,\u201d said Mr. Carter, alluding to the president\u2019s campaign to pressure Republican-held states to conduct rare mid-decade redistricting, which kicked off a bipartisan gerrymandering war that spread from Texas to California to Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia and, on Wednesday, Florida.<\/p>\n
The uncertainties surrounding the breadth of the high court\u2019s decision haven\u2019t stopped politicians and strategists from starting pressure campaigns to get the ball rolling in other Southern states. Some of those states would have to call their legislatures back to consider drawing new districts. And at least two, Mississippi and North Carolina, have already held their primaries for Congress.<\/p>\n
Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican and the front-runner to be the state\u2019s next governor, called on her party to redraw the lone remaining Democratic district in Tennessee, which is centered in the majority-Black city of Memphis. She pledged that as governor, she would \u201cdo everything I can to make this map a reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response to questions about a new map, Speaker Cameron Sexton of Tennessee said \u201cwe are reviewing the recent opinion as I have conversations with the White House and other individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Georgia, another candidate for governor, Rick Jackson, called on lawmakers to add redistricting to an expected special session later this year, although Georgia\u2019s May 19 primaries are just three days after Louisiana\u2019s. Early voting began in Georgia on Monday.<\/p>\n
With its primaries on June 9, South Carolina has a little more time, and Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, battling in a crowded Republican primary for governor in the state, declared it time \u201cto end the Democratic stronghold on the 6th Congressional District,\u201d a majority-minority district long held by Representative Jim Clyburn, a Black Democrat.<\/p>\n
A competitor of hers in the Republican primary, Representative Ralph Norman, agreed. Mr. Clyburn\u2019s district was already gerrymandered by the Republican-dominated legislature to pack Black voters from Charleston with Black voters from Columbia, in a play by Republicans to shore up the coastal First District of South Carolina, which had swung between Democratic and Republican representatives.<\/p>\n
Mr. Norman said on Wednesday the legislature should now break up the state\u2019s last Democratic district.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith a Republican supermajority, we have the ability to end this kind of gerrymandering and restore balance,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
And in Alabama, where a federal court had imposed a congressional map, Representative Barry Moore, a Republican campaigning for a Senate seat being vacated by Tommy Tuberville\u2019s run for governor, called on the legislature to \u201credraw these districts the right way, fair, constitutional and representative of our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sweep and impact of the Supreme Court\u2019s decision on the Voting Rights Act may remain uncertain, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,5648,3,265131,3479,21,19,22,20,25,24,266641,266642],"class_list":["post-614129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-donald-j","tag-news","tag-supreme-court-us","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-voting-and-voters","tag-voting-rights-act-1965"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}