Louisiana Republicans pass new electoral map that guts majority-Black district

Louisiana Republicans approved a new congressional map on Friday which would eliminate a majority-Black congressional district that was at the center of a landmark supreme court ruling gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The new map reconfigures the state’s sixth congressional district, now represented by Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat. Lawmakers drew the district in 2024 after a court found the map lawmakers enacted after the 2020 census diluted the influence of Black voters and violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The new map will probably give Republicans control of five of Louisiana’s six congressional seats (the previous map had a 4-2 Republican-Democrat split). The bill now goes to Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, who is expected to sign it. “It does exactly what it was designed to do: consolidate white political power by cracking Black communities apart and drowning their votes in Republican-dominated districts,” said the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed the new map. “The communities targeted by this map – Black voters in Baton Rouge, in Shreveport, along the corridor that Rep. Cleo Fields has represented – did not stay quiet. They showed up at the Capitol in the middle of the night. They testified for hours into the early morning. They made their voices heard at every step of a process designed to minimize their input. …