A new court decision is shaking up the political landscape in Louisiana, and it’s a huge deal for the 2026 midterm elections. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has blocked the state’s congressional redistricting map, ruling that it is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander by the GOP. This decision, which supports a lower court’s ruling, found that the map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by diluting the voting power of Black residents.
The court rejected the state’s argument that it was no longer necessary to consider race when drawing the map. Basically, the court found that the map, which was originally passed by the Republican-majority legislature in 2022, was designed to weaken the influence of Black voters. The court found that the map used specific tactics to achieve this. It basically “packed” Black voters into a small number of districts where they were the majority and “cracked” other Black communities by splitting them across multiple districts.
