Meeting with reporters in Bossier on Thursday, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he should be “biting my nails and sitting on the edge of my seat.”
That’s because deliberations were ongoing in the Louisiana Legislature over a new congressional map given a final approval on Friday that will eliminate a majority-Black district and likely strengthen Republican control over Louisiana’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Apparently it’s gonna be a 5-1 map, and they’re going to try to draw it as fair and clearly as they can, and, you know, I’ve been asked my opinion about this, but it’s not really within my purview,” Johnson told reporters before the map passed. “It’s the legislature that makes that decision, so I’m just as anxious as everybody else is to see what those lines are going to look like.”
The new map, which was signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry, replaces U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields’ majority-Black district running from part of Shreveport down to Baton Rouge with a Republican-favored district near the capitol.
Johnson said he hoped the new map would keep his district largely intact.
It largely does, but there are some changes. His 4th District will absorb parts of Fields’ district in Caddo and Natchitoches parishes and westward and give up Grant, Winn, Jackson, Lincoln and parts of Ouachita and Rapides parishes to the 5th District. The new 4th District encompasses all of northwest Louisiana.
The changes all come after the monumental 6-3 Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais invalidated the state’s existing map. The decision gutted part of the Voting Rights Act, a seminal piece of Civil Rights-era legislation, and in doing so narrowed states’ abilities to use race as a determining factor in creating majority-minority districts.
Louisiana Republicans have said the new map is intended to consolidate partisan control. But, in a state in which 93.4% of registered Republicans are white, Democrats, including Fields, have argued the map undermines progress for Black representation.
The redrawing is part of a nationwide battle initiated by President Donald Trump that is being fought in several states between Republicans and Democrats to use mid-decade redistricting to claw seats toward their respective parties in a fight for control of the U.S. House.
Johnson has, for instance, been critical of Democratic efforts to rework Virginia’s map to give themselves a 10-1 majority in place of the current 6-5 map. The measure passed a referendum but was struck down by Virginia’s Supreme Court and then the national Supreme Court earlier this month in decisions criticized by Democratic officials in that state.
Johnson told reporters in April that it was a “hyper-partisan gerrymandering boondoggle” because Virginia has an “almost 50-50” party split, “so a 10-1 map is not justified in that state.”
While Republicans dominate Louisiana politics, the state’s voter registration numbers paint a different picture. Louisiana’s new, pending map is based on a 38%-35% statewide split between registered Republicans and Democrats (with voters of all other affiliations making up the remainder), yet it creates a 5-1 majority for Republicans.
When asked by The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate how Louisiana’s map is not the same kind of “hyper-partisan gerrymandering,” Johnson argued the situations are “totally different.”
“Virginia is literally, by definition, a totally purple state. It’s almost exactly 50-50,” he said. “… But the Virginia legislature went in to violate their state Constitution. That’s what’s different there, as in other states, and they literally said in their ballot initiative that they were going to temporarily suspend their constitution so that they could gerrymander and rig the election.”
“Louisiana is, I hope that the legislature’s going to produce a very fair map,” he continued. “What the Supreme Court said in the Callais case, which was Louisiana’s case, is that you cannot draw congressional lines based on skin color, because if you draw lines to favor one group or race of people in that example, then you automatically disenfranchise others of other races, and so, I mean, that’s a logical proposition.”
The new map still has to survive potential legal battles from the initial plaintiffs in the Callais case, who say the majority-Black district it still preserves was too reliant on race as a factor, and from Black elected officials who believe it violates redistricting laws.
“What we hope for, what we hope that this new map represents and reflects, is an accurate depiction of the communities,” Johnson claimed on Thursday, “and that everybody’s fairly represented.”