Published: May 13, 2026
By: Avery White, Gracie Thomas and Sheridan White, LSU Manship School News Service
BATON ROUGE, La. — At 4:25 a.m. Wednesday – following a marathon, overnight hearing – a Senate committee approved new Congressional maps for Louisiana, sending the bill to the full Senate.
A bill eliminating one of Louisiana’s two majority-Democratic districts advanced from a Senate committee on a 4-3 vote early Wednesday morning following more than nine hours of testimony, setting the stage for Republican voting majorities in five of the state’s six congressional districts.
The vote, which came at 4:25 a.m. Wednesday, amid a packed hearing room filled with bleary-eyed participants, is the next step in a tense redistricting battle following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on April 29 declaring one of Louisiana’s two Democratic districts unconstitutional for racial gerrymandering.
The 5-1 map created by Senate Bill 121, authored by Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, was one of two presented to the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. The other bill, SB 407 by Sen. Edward Price, D-Gonzales, which failed on a 4-3 vote, would have maintained two Democratic-majority districts.
“We’re a democracy, and democracy rules,” Morris said, explaining why Republicans had the power under the Supreme Court ruling to establish the new districts. “The Greeks invented it, and that means majority rules. If the minority doesn’t like it, I understand they don’t like it.”
Read more at WWLTV.
LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 
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