Louisiana suspended its congressional primaries Thursday just as early voting was about to get underway, after a Supreme Court ruling weakened the Voting Rights Act and gave Republican officials fresh cover to redraw maps and delay the vote. The governor’s order pushed the U.S. House primary to either July 15 or a date to be set by the Legislature, while all other races on the ballot will proceed as scheduled.
Who Controls the Map Controls the Game
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry issued an executive order postponing the U.S. House primary in response to a ruling Wednesday by the court that struck down a majority Black congressional district. Landry said, “Allowing elections to proceed under an unconstitutional map would undermine the integrity of our system and violate the rights of our voters,” and added, “This executive order ensures we uphold the rule of law while giving the Legislature the time it needs to pass a fair and lawful congressional map.”
The Republican-controlled secretary of state’s office, which declared an electoral emergency allowing for Landry’s order, said it would post notices at early voting sites alerting the public about the suspended congressional primary. Early voting had been scheduled to begin Saturday for Louisiana’s May 16 primaries. The machinery of the state moved fast enough to stop the vote, but not fast enough to make the process feel anything like democratic stability.
President Donald Trump, in a series of social media posts Thursday, praised Landry for moving quickly to revise the state’s congressional districts and urged Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to do likewise in response to the Supreme Court’s decision. House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “I think all states who have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully, and I think they should do it before the midterm.”
Who Gets Squeezed When the Rules Change
Louisiana state Sen. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat who represents the New Orleans area, said, “This is going to cause mass confusion among voters -- Democrats, Republicans, white, Black, everybody,” and added, “What they’re effectively doing is changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game. It’s rigging the system.” That is the cost of top-down redistricting battles: ordinary voters get the confusion, while officials and party leaders treat the map like a weapon.
Delaying an election is unusual but not unprecedented. During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, several states pushed back elections because of health concerns. Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, who led Louisiana at the time, postponed Louisiana’s April 4 presidential primary three weeks before it was supposed to occur, then delayed it again until July 11. The state has already shown how easily elections can be moved when those in power decide the calendar is theirs to manipulate.
Louisiana currently is represented in the U.S. House by four Republicans and two Democrats. A revised map could give Republicans a chance to pick up at least one more seat in the November midterms, adding to Republican gains elsewhere from redistricting. Voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade, after each census. But Trump last year urged Texas Republicans to redraw House districts to give the GOP an edge in the midterms. California Democrats reciprocated, and redistricting efforts soon cascaded across states.
The Redistricting Arms Race
On Wednesday, Florida became the latest state to redraw its U.S. House districts, adopting a new map backed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that could give the GOP a chance at winning several additional seats. The Florida vote occurred just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority issued a ruling that significantly weakened minority protections under the federal Voting Rights Act.
The court said Louisiana officials had relied too heavily on race when drawing a congressional district that is represented by Democrat Cleo Fields. After the 2020 census, Louisiana officials had drawn House voting district boundaries that maintained one Black majority district and five mostly white districts, in a state with a population that is about one-third Black. A federal judge later struck down the map for violating the Voting Rights Act. The following year the Supreme Court found that Alabama had to create its own second majority Black congressional district. In response, Louisiana’s legislature and governor adopted a new House map in 2024 that created a second Black majority district. That map was subsequently challenged in court, leading to the most recent Supreme Court ruling.
After the ruling, Landry called U.S. House candidates on Wednesday and told them that primaries would most likely be stalled, according to Misti Cordell, a Republican running in a crowded race to fill U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow’s vacated seat. Cordell said, “It’s an inconvenience for a candidate for sure, but you know they want to do it right versus having to go through all this again,” and added that she appreciated the heads up before she and other candidates began “spending their war chest” during the final weeks leading up to Election Day.
Republican state lawmakers are reviewing which pending bills could be used to alter primaries and reconfigure congressional maps, said Louisiana state Rep. Beau Beaullieu, chair of the House committee overseeing redistricting efforts. The Legislature now gets to decide which version of “fair and lawful” the public is allowed to live under next.