Louisiana lawmakers move to change election dates ahead of Supreme Court redistricting ruling

By Greg LaRose
Contributing Writer

(lailluminator.com) — Louisiana lawmakers convened on Thursday (Oct. 23) at the State Capitol for a special session to adjust the state’s 2026 election calendar. Republicans want to account for a pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a case that could dramatically reshape Louisiana’s six congressional districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections – a ruling that several other states are watching as they ponder redrawing their maps.

The front-running proposals from the Republican-run legislature – House Bill 1 and identical Senate Bill 1 – push next year’s primary schedule back by roughly one month. Instead of an April 18 party primary for Louisiana’s congressional races and some municipal elections, the new date would be May 16. Primary runoffs would be moved from May 30 to June 27.

The start of the three-day qualifying period for the election gets shifted from Jan. 14 to Feb. 11 in the bills Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter, R-Port Allen, and Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, have co-authored. Both lead their respective chamber’s legislative committees that handle election proposals. Procedural efforts from Democrats in both chambers failed to keep the bills from being moved to their committees.

It remains to be seen whether this one-month adjustment would be enough time to account for whatever ruling the Supreme Court issues on Callais v. Louisiana. A group of white voters have challenged the constitutionality of the 6th Congressional District, which state lawmakers crafted in 2024 to account for the state’s Black population reaching nearly one-third according to the 2020 census. U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, D-New Orleans, won an election later in the year to fill that seat, giving Louisiana two Black members in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Republicans might be banking on a ruling from justices before Dec. 8, the end of the month-long congressional qualifying period in Texas, said Rep. Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus. The Texas Legislature switched five of its U.S. House seats to favor Republicans earlier this year in a map that’s also being challenged in federal court.

Jordan said a ruling on the Callais case in the coming weeks would play into Republicans’ strategy in both states and others that want to update their maps to add more GOP districts.

“What they’re doing is trying to give themselves the greatest amount of time in an effort to really take away the voting strength of minority voters,” he said.

Debate began in earnest on Senate Bill 1 in a Thursday afternoon committee hearing that grew heated when Sens. Gary Carter of New Orleans and Sam Jenkins of Lake Charles, both Black Democrats, grilled Kleinpeter on his date-changing proposal.

“This is like you’re a kid and finding out there’s no Santa Claus,” Carter said, arguing the date changes would illegally “interfere” with next year’s congressional elections.

Carter’s uncle, U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, also testified at the hearing and urged senators to “pump the brakes.”

“Let’s answer the tough questions. Let’s hear everyone out and then proceed with caution,” Troy Carter said in an interview. “But to act prematurely before the Supreme Court has even digested fully the arguments [in Callais] is probably not a good way to do it.”

The Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced the Senate Bill 1 to the floor in an 5-3 party-line vote. The panel also approved Senate Bill 2, which moves the election date for five constitutional amendments from the April 18 ballot to May 16.

Through the first day of the session, lawmakers have not yet discussed at length the scenario of a Supreme Court decision in the Callais case coming later in the spring. Robert Collins, a public policy professor at Dillard University, said Gov. Jeff Landry’s decision to convene lawmakers to move election dates comes with some political risk. It depends on justices ruling in time for the legislature to redraw congressional maps before the start of the 2026 election calendar.

“He’s gambling that he’s going to get the ruling when he needs it, and you can only push back the date so far,” Collins said.

The stage for the current special session was set in early January 2024 when Landry urged lawmakers to add the second Black district rather than allow a federal court to redraw a map from 2022 that had just one majority-Black congressional district. The governor convened legislators just days after he took office for what was the third redistricting special session in 14 months. Republicans had previously rejected any map that added a second majority-Black congressional district.

Republican Attorney General Murrill, who defended Louisiana second Black district, has since sided with the plaintiffs to argue the process used to craft its boundaries – which zig-zags horizontally between Baton Rouge and Shreveport – is an illegal racial gerrymander. Specifically, she maintains Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act clashes with the 14th and 15th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

Section 2 prohibits voting laws or procedures that discriminate based on race, color or membership in a language minority group. The two amendments cover, in part, representation in Congress and racial discrimination in voting.

Murrill’s solicitor general, Benjamin Aguiñaga, argued Oct. 15 before the Supreme Court that race was illegally used to create Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District. Questions from conservative justices seemed to align with his points.

As recently as August, Landry had been pushing lawmakers to meet for yet another special redistricting session, well before the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Louisiana case. But legislative leaders pushed back, arguing that it would be pointless to draw new maps without knowing whether justices would require Louisiana to include two, one or no majority-Black congressional districts.

Julie O’Donoghue contributed to this report.

This article originally published in the October 27, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.