The sweep and impact of the Supreme Court’s 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.
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.
The Supreme Court’s 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’s current map. But it came four days before the first ballots in Louisiana were to be cast.
Nancy Landry, the secretary of state, said that her office’s lawyers were reviewing the opinion. The state’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, said on Wednesday she believed the Legislature had time to act on a new map. But, she told reporters, “Obviously, those are decisions that need to be made very quickly.”
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.
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 “to evaluate all available legislative responses to this ruling and to restore the full protections,” an indication that any quick move to draw him out of the House would yield a court challenge.
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, “The Supreme Court has affirmed what we have said for years: Drawing districts for political reasons is the states’ prerogative, not a federal civil-rights violation.”
Beyond Mr. Fields’s district, Republicans could also move to dilute the state’s other majority-Black district, a New Orleans-area seat held by Representative Troy Carter, a Democrat.
Mr. Carter acknowledged “they may” 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.
“The governor has made it very clear that he’s in lock step with President Trump,” said Mr. Carter, alluding to the president’s 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.
The uncertainties surrounding the breadth of the high court’s decision haven’t 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.
Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican and the front-runner to be the state’s 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 “do everything I can to make this map a reality.”
In response to questions about a new map, Speaker Cameron Sexton of Tennessee said “we are reviewing the recent opinion as I have conversations with the White House and other individuals.”
In Georgia, another candidate for governor, Rick Jackson, called on lawmakers to add redistricting to an expected special session later this year, although Georgia’s May 19 primaries are just three days after Louisiana’s. Early voting began in Georgia on Monday.
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 “to end the Democratic stronghold on the 6th Congressional District,” a majority-minority district long held by Representative Jim Clyburn, a Black Democrat.
A competitor of hers in the Republican primary, Representative Ralph Norman, agreed. Mr. Clyburn’s 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.
Mr. Norman said on Wednesday the legislature should now break up the state’s last Democratic district.
“With a Republican supermajority, we have the ability to end this kind of gerrymandering and restore balance,” he said in a statement.
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’s run for governor, called on the legislature to “redraw these districts the right way, fair, constitutional and representative of our communities.”
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
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