Federal appeals court blocks Louisiana's new congressional map in blow to GOP

Judges for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Louisiana's request to allow it to enforce its long-stalled congressional redistricting map, delivering a near-term blow to Republicans in the state by ruling that it amounts to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

All three judges on the bench voted to uphold a lower court's ruling that the map in question — originally passed by Louisiana's Republican-majority legislature in 2022 — violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by diluting the votes of Black residents in the state.

They also affirmed the district court's ruling that the map in question violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by, "'packing' Black voters into a small number of majority-Black districts, and ‘cracking’ other Black communities across multiple districts, thereby depriving them of the opportunity to form e...