State trooper and Capitol Security Director Terry Alario escort a woman, who identified herself only as Mrs. Pat, from the Louisiana House of Representatives after its members voted on Thursday, May 28, 2026, to approve a congressional map that removes one of the state’s majority Black members of the House of Representatives. (Photo: Greg LaRose/Louisiana Illuminator)
The Louisiana House of Representatives on Thursday approved a congressional redistricting bill that increases Republican representation in Congress ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
The House passed it on a party-line vote of 66 to 36 Senate Bill No. 121 Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, who holds only one majority-Black district among Louisiana’s six House seats. By eliminating the second black district created by the Legislature two years ago, Republicans would score another likely victory in their bid to maintain control of Congress.
Representative Robby CarterD-Amite, voted with Republicans to pass the bill.
The majority-Black district included in the Morris bill is essentially the same district that Republican U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, won in 2022. The map removes the majority-Black district held by U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge.
The bill passed after about seven hours of debate, including speeches from nearly all House Democrats who opposed it.
Rep. Beau Beaullieu of New Iberia authored the bill amendments negotiated between the House and Senate. Beaullieu said the point of Morris’s map is to ignore race and focus on the party. While racial gerrymandering remains prohibited, partisan redistricting is legal. Beaullieu said his map is designed to maximize Republican advantage.
Several Democrats rejected the notion that the bill ignores race, saying race and party are significantly intertwined in Louisiana and throughout the South, with over 90% of Louisiana Republicans being white.
“SB 121, in its current form, is a blatant effort to consolidate political power in the hands of the white majority while depriving Black Louisianans in particular of equal opportunity,” said Rep. Denise Marcelle, D-Baton Rouge.
In his speech against the bill, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rep. Kyle Green of Marrero detailed Louisiana’s history of racial oppression, including slavery and decades when “the oppressed and the oppressor lived as neighbors, generation after generation.”
“Everything we’re voting on today is at the top of that story,” Green said. “SB 121 asks us to give a piece of it back, not to history, but to the same impulse that broke it.”
Congressman Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, went a step further, calling voting for the bill a racist act. Jordan said he felt like he was in an abusive relationship with his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives.
“How many racist acts can you participate in before you are considered a racist?”, Jordan – asked the members of the House.
Because map was changed by the House, This must return to the Senate, where a final vote on signing the changes will take place. Morris said he thought the Senate vote would take place on Friday. The senator said he thought he agreed with the changes but needed to dig deeper into the data.
Beaullieu’s changes move some North Louisiana parishes between the 4th and 5th Congressional Districts, modify Acadiana parishes in the 3rd District and add the northern portion of Pointe Coupee Parish to the Baton Rouge-based 6th District.
Changes in Pointe Coupee Parish could impact neighborhoods in the 5th Congressional District. Her representative would likely have to travel through Mississippi’s 6th District to get from the north Louisiana parish to West Feliciana Parish and parts of the district east of it.
Beaullieu said he believes the district is legally contiguous.
While debate over the map continued, Rep. U.S. Clay Higgins, R-Lafayette, opposed the Beaullieu Amendment
“What the hell? Higgins wrote social media post. “This map is the worst I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. This Frankenstein-like thing was WITHOUT A DOUBT drawn by a very tiny handful of guys in a secret room. NO ONE should support this insanely bad map.”
The Morris Act passed the Legislature despite hours of public testimony, including: 10-hour interrogation at nightopposing the proposal.
The plan to keep one district favoring Democrats drew the ire of white voters, whose lawsuit took them to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month, prompting Republican state legislators to redraw Louisiana’s congressional map. A 6-3 decision by conservative justices in Louisiana v. Callais prompted GOP leaders in other Southern states to adjust their congressional maps as well.
Callais plaintiffs filed another lawsuit Tuesday this argues that the modern map is also based on a single district race that favors Democrats.
The day after Supreme Court In his ruling, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended Louisiana’s May 16 U.S. House primary to give lawmakers enough time to adopt modern maps for the 2026 midterm elections.
Earlier this month, lawmakers approved a bill to move the primary elections to November 3. Instead of holding a semi-closed party primary as originally planned, Louisiana will return to a jungle primary in which candidates from all parties will appear on the same ballot. Any overtime will take place on December 12.
The qualifying period for the November U.S. House of Representatives elections is August 5–7, which means that candidates who registered in February for the May 16 election will have to qualify again if they still decide to run.
The bill moving the election date to November also invalidates all ballots already cast in the U.S. House of Representatives primary elections. More than 42,000 people returned absentee ballots before Landry suspended racing. Secretary of State Nancy Landry stated that she was unable to remove individual races from the ballot before the May 16 election, so tens of thousands of other people were able to vote in that election during the early voting period.
Another provision of the bill will hide the number of invalidated ballots cast in House of Representatives elections from public disclosure. These details were added to the legislation in a closed-door meeting and passed by both houses within an hour without an opportunity for public comment.
This story was originally produced by Highlighter from Louisianawhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes the Ohio Capital Journal and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
