Louisiana moved to postpone its May primaries on Thursday in a move that came as other southern states are also scrambling to redraw congressional districts in response to the supreme court’s Wednesday ruling that severely weakened the landmark Voting Rights Act.
Before the supreme court’s decision, eliminating a key protection against racial discrimination in drawing voting maps, some states had already begun initiating processes to redraw districts and gut Black voting power. More states have now followed, with governors calling for special sessions to redraw congressional districts, potentially before the midterm elections in November.
Louisiana governor Jeff Landry and attorney general Liz Murrill, both Republicans, said in a joint statement that the state can no longer use its current districts to carry out the primaries after the supreme court ruling. Early voting had been scheduled to begin Saturday in advance of the 16 May primary.
“The State is currently enjoined from carrying out congressional elections under the current map,” Landry and Murrill said in the statement on social media Thursday. “We are working together with the Legislature and the Secretary of State’s office to develop a path forward.”
Voting districts are typically redrawn once a decade, after the census. Last year, Donald Trump triggered a round of mid-decade redistricting after he urged Texas Republicans to give a boost to the Republican party during the midterm elections. California Democrats responded in turn. From there, multiple other states began pushing redistricting, along with those whose maps were already tied up in state and federal courts.
Now, state legislatures have a new opportunity, and several southern states have already acted or indicated they will do so soon.
While it’s unclear how many states will be able to redraw their maps before the November midterm elections given that filing deadlines and in some cases primaries have passed in many states, Republicans are expected to take extreme measures to move quickly.
Before the ink on the justices’ decision had dried, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature, called back into a special session by governor Ron DeSantis in recent weeks, passed new congressional maps to deliver four more seats to the Republican party. The map, which was already in process before the Supreme Court decision, gives Republicans the advantage for 24 of the state’s 28 House seats.
“DeSantis’s extreme new gerrymander was drawn behind closed doors because he knows the voters overwhelmingly oppose this partisan power grab,” John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement. “Instead of standing up for their constituents, Florida Republicans have just voted to silence millions of Floridians in service of Donald Trump’s plot to steal the 2026 midterm elections.”
While Florida advanced the issue of redistricting further than any other state since the supreme court’s ruling, other Republican-controlled states seemed poised to follow.
Mississippi governor Tate Reeves announced that 21 days after the supreme court decision, the state legislature would return for a special session to address redistricting, which had been put on hold pending the decision.
Charles Taylor, executive director of the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP, said that the organization was already working to address both the decision and the special session.
“Too often in this country, Black voters bear the brunt of the political theater and I want to be clear: the Republican party and power is completely linked to the dilutions of Black voting power,” he said. “Mississippi is the Blackest state in the country and we have a governor and a legislature that is chomping at the bits, not to create equality, but to continue to suppress the Black voices and Black folks in our state. It is a sad day, but we stand ready to fight.”
Reeves celebrated the supreme court’s decision in a post on X.
“First Dobbs. Now Callais,” he wrote. “Just Mississippi and Louisiana down here saving our country!”
Like Louisiana, Alabama was sued after the 2020 redistricting cycle for violating section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Alabama attorney general, Steve Marshall, said the state “will act as quickly as possible to apply this ruling to Alabama’s redistricting efforts”. The state has two majority Black districts, including one that voted for the first time only two years ago.
In Tennessee, shortly after the supreme court decision, Republican senator and gubernatorial candidate Marsha Blackburn wrote a post on X targeting the state’s lone majority-Black district.
“I urge our state legislature to reconvene to redistrict another Republican seat in Memphis,” she wrote alongside a photo of Tennessee redrawn to be entirely red. “It’s essential to cement @realDonaldTrump’s agenda and the Golden Age of America.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting
