Louisiana Republicans have abandoned their ambitious plans to redraw the state’s congressional districts before the 2026 midterm elections, after the Supreme Court declined in late December to expedite its ruling in the landmark voting rights case Louisiana v. Callais.
State Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter, R-Port Allen, who co-sponsored legislation to change the 2026 election calendar to allow for a new round of redistricting, said in an interview Friday there were no plans to hold another special session or deviate from the existing map. Lawmakers can’t create new maps after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the spring because Louisiana is switching to a closed party primary system this year.
The decision represents a major setback for Louisiana Republicans, who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a special legislative session in October specifically to move back primary election dates and create time for potential redistricting. The date changes lawmakers approved in a 73-29 vote move next year’s primary election schedule back 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 2.
The switch moved up the qualifying period for candidates from July to February, which created a limited window for redistricting if the decision was issued in late 2025.
Feb. 11 is the candidate filing deadline, meaning it’s the last day a candidate can file to run in a voting district. However, the Louisiana Secretary of State was adamant with legislative leaders that Jan. 13 is the actual deadline for her to receive a new map to implement for the May 16 primary.
The Louisiana v. Callais case centers on whether the state’s 2024 congressional map, which includes two majority-Black districts, constitutes illegal racial gerrymandering. The case in question, Louisiana v. Callais, challenges the legality of a second majority-Black U.S. House district Republicans state lawmakers drew in 2024 in response to a federal court finding a 2022 version of the state’s congressional maps was unconstitutional.
As of now, the map known as SB 8, which the Louisiana legislature passed in 2024 to create a second district where Black voters have the opportunity to elect a preferred candidate, remains in place. That is the map Louisiana used for the 2024 elections, and, if a congressional election were held today, that is the map Louisianians would vote under.
The case has national implications for the future of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling in Louisiana v. Callais could dramatically impact the 2026 congressional midterm elections. “If the Supreme Court further guts the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, and does it early enough in the term, you could see up to eight congressional seats quickly redrawn for partisan political gain,” said Issue One Policy Director Michael McNulty.
“If the Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court, strikes down Section 2, this not only will affect congressional maps,” said Rep. Terry Landry Jr., a first-term Louisiana state legislator and former Louisiana state policy director for the SPLC. “This will affect the state legislatures. This will affect city councils. It will affect school boards.
The timing of Louisiana’s election calendar changes had been carefully calculated around Republican hopes for an early Supreme Court ruling. Their calendar adjustment banks on the U.S. Supreme Court bucking its pattern of issuing decisions in the spring and instead making a ruling in a key redistricting case before Christmas. In the GOP’s preferred scenario, justices would issue a decision in the case by Dec. 20 that would clear the way for legislators to redraw the maps in an early January special session.
The Callais case is also notable because justices were originally supposed to rule on the case in spring 2025. But in a rare move, they punted their decision to their next term and called for a second round of oral arguments that were held in October. The fact that the case had been argued twice gave GOP lawmakers hope a ruling would come earlier than usual.
Democratic lawmakers had warned throughout the October special session that the election date changes were a partisan maneuver designed to weaken Black political representation. Rep. Ed Larvadain III, D-Alexandria, said he expects the Legislature to convene for a special session this winter to quickly draw new maps with little public input once the Supreme Court rules. “The Legislature will intentionally create unfair maps,” he predicted. “There will be no African American representation in Congress.”
The current congressional map includes districts represented by Congressmen Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, and Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge.
Louisiana’s population is roughly one-third African-American.
Beyond Louisiana, multiple other states are watching the Callais decision closely as they consider their own redistricting efforts ahead of the 2026 midterms. Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, and Florida have already demonstrated interest in