By Gracie Thomas and Sheridan White | LSU Manship School News Service
BATON ROUGE – An amended congressional district map eliminating one of Louisiana’s two majority-Democratic districts was approved by the House and Governmental Affairs Committee in a 10-7 vote down party lines Thursday after a 10-hour hearing highlighted by vocal opposition.
The new district map, amended successfully by Rep. Dixon McMakin, R-Baton Rouge, maintains the five Republican districts and one Democratic district, offering “tweaks and slight movements” to the original Senate Bill 121.
The amended bill will be heard on the House floor next week.
Morehouse, Lincoln and Jackson parishes would be moved from District 5 to District 4. Grant and St. Landry parishes would be made whole, joining the 5th District, and Calcasieu Parish would be made whole as well, joining the 3rd District. District 6 would be shifted to include parts of Point Coupee, St. Martin and Lafayette parishes.
Under questioning from Rep. C. Denice Marcelle, D-Baton Rouge, McMakin said the amendments had nothing to do with any future congressional aspirations that he might have.
“I currently live in (District) No. 6, and I stay in 6,” McMakin said.
Rep. Rodney Lyons, D-Marrero, said the amendments were more substantial than “tweaks.”
“We’re basically going to carve and paste a map together with no input for anybody,” Lyons said. “We can’t perform surgery on maps with no input.”
Speaking against the bill, Marc Morial, former New Orleans mayor and the current president and CEO of the National Urban League, called Morris’ redrawn map a “Jack-o’-lantern plan, because the Jack-o’-lantern of Republican maximization is on top of a head of intentional racial discrimination.”
“My appeal to this committee is to scrap all of these plans, and like grown men and women, black and white, from all sections of this state, to go back to the drawing board and identify a consensus plan that reduces the risk of millions of dollars more of litigation, and which sends a message to the people of Louisiana that we’re going to be committed to finding common ground when it comes to reapportionment,” Morial said.
While acknowledging the Legislature had the authority to redraw maps to bolster political partisanship, Morial said, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. … The right thing to do is to throw all of these plans in the garbage can and go behind and set up an organized framework for everyone to sit at the table and work things out.”
Sidney Barthelemy, the first Black person to serve in the Louisiana State Senate since Reconstruction and the former mayor of New Orleans, also spoke in opposition to the bill, which he said was the result of political pressure applied by President Donald Trump.
“Basically, it’s a one-trick pony up there, one person has the legislative power, and that’s the president,” Barthelemy told the committee. “He hasn’t been very fair, I think, to the people of the country, and that’s another reason we should have more diversity in the things that we do.”
Citing political pressure from the White House, former state legislator Arthur Morrell, a New Orleans Democrat, said Republicans were being used by the president to achieve his personal goals.
“He knows he has you,” Morell said. “You’ve been going with him for so long, and what has he given to you?”
Lyons submitted another set of amendments in which Democrats would have opportunities for success in two of the six districts, but that failed on a 6-11 vote. Rep. Wilford Carter, D-Lake Charles, was the lone Democrat to vote against the amendment due to not wanting to settle for opportunity districts rather than minority-majority districts.
The bill’s author, Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, addressed committee members saying in addition to the redrawn map being similar to a 2022 map “tacitly” approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in its Callais v. Louisiana decision, the redistricting plan also had many similarities to a 2011 congressional map that had been green-lighted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Why is that relevant?” Morris asked. “This was pre-cleared by the Justice Department (under) President Obama as being an appropriate map. So, what we have now is a continuation of those maps in a very similar form that were pre-cleared by the United States Justice Department.”
Morris said the new Supreme Court ruling, while not allowing maps to be redrawn along racial lines, permitted the Legislature to draw the state’s six congressional districts to enhance partisan outcomes.
“I did not look into the racial characteristics,” Morris said. “I looked at districts that were historically performing as Republican or Democrat, and I intentionally wanted to preserve at least five highly performing Republican districts.”
Asked by Speaker Pro Tempore Mike Johnson if Morris should have considered race “at least a little bit” in creating maps, Morris said that would have courted legal challenges given the Callais decision.
“I think you run a great risk if you do that,” Morris said. “There’s always litigation any time a map gets filed, particularly a congressional map. Suits are filed usually by multiple sides. What was important to me was to have a map that was defendable under the Constitution of the United States.”
The final vote for the bill as amended split party lines at 10-7.