In another redistricting win for national Democrats, Louisiana lawmakers on Friday passed a new congressional map that includes an additional Black-majority district. It will be finalized once the governor signs it into law, which multiple experts say he is expected to do in the coming days.

“This map delivers significant progress for Black Louisianans, who will now have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice in two of the state’s congressional districts," said former Attorney General Eric H. Holder, who currently serves as the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

"It is a result of the tenacity of the voters who fought tirelessly for their rights to be protected in court, and it is the result of courts deterring anti-democratic behavior by demonstrating their willingness to hold legislators to account when orders are defied," his statement continued.

Additionally, on a "basic level," according to Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor at Inside Elections, "this means that Democrats will probably pick up a seat and Louisiana Republicans will lose that seat."

Currently, Republicans hold the House majority, but only by a slim margin — Democrats need to net five additional seats to win the lower chamber later this year. There’s also a special election in New York next month to replace Rep. George Santos after he was ousted by his colleagues, which is a highly competitive district — President Biden carried the district in 2020, but Santos, a Republican won in 2022. Democrats have been heavily investing in the New York special election, and if they pull off a win, it lowers the number of seats needed to flip the house to four.

“It's a very small number of seats that they have to flip in order to regain control of the House. This is just the latest in a series of redistricting decisions that have adjusted that baseline math,” Rubashkin said, noting that although Republicans added additional seats after a redistricting win in North Carolina, “I think that big picture, this is good news for the democratic path back to the majority, because it's it's one more seat they can count in their column.”

According to Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster based in Alabama, both Democrats and Republicans are looking at “single-digit” majorities.

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“It's not just a new seat, it's a seat that comes at the expense of a Republican seat,” McCrary noted. “In a previous era of American politics, a couple seats here or there might not have been … worth popping the champagne over, if you can swing a couple seats. But in this era, a couple seats going from safe Republican to safe Democratic is a big deal and potentially could be majority makers.”

It’s also a notable blow to House Speaker Mike Johnson, who had vocally opposed the proposed congressional map earlier this week.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, the Louisiana congressman wrote, “It remains my position that the existing map is constitutional and that the legal challenge to it should be tried on merits so the State has adequate opportunity to defend its merits.”

“It's notable whenever the Speaker of the House weighs in on something like this, especially so because it is his home state, he's from Louisiana, and because it put him in opposition to the governor, who was also a Republican,” Rubashkin said.

But according to Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, “all politics is local.”

Although Johnson has a vested interest in expanding the House majority as the Speaker, so losing a seat in his home state is less than ideal, ultimately, “punishing Garret Graves seemed more important to the people in the legislature,” Li said, referring to Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, whose district will be heavily impacted by the proposed map.

According to McCrary, Republicans in Louisiana’s legislature appear to “want to make sure that they have their fingerprints on who the loser of the scenario is. And that appears to be Congressman Garret Graves, who's run afoul of Steve Scalise, who's run afoul of the new governor Jeff Landry, among others.”

Louisiana lawmakers took a starkly different approach to passing a new congressional map compared to their Alabama counterparts, who instead, failed to pass a constitutional map and the court appointed a special master to draw new congressional lines.

“Louisiana seems to be complying with the clerk's order as opposed to resisting it as Alabama did,” Li said. “I think what they wanted to avoid is the possibility that the court would end up drawing the map and the court would draw the map in a way that hurt an incumbent that they wanted to protect.”

“By retaining control with the process, they were able to shape how that map ended up,” Li said.

Friday’s win for Democrats comes after years of litigation. A group of civil rights activists and Louisiana voters filed a lawsuit in 2022, arguing that the existing map drawn after the 2020 census violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on a similar case in Alabama, the Fifth Circuit of Appeals earlier this month ordered the Louisiana legislature to redraw its congressional map in compliance with the Voting Rights Act by January 30, 2024, or a trial would take place.

“I'm relieved,” said Davonte Lewis, one of the plaintiffs in Robinson v. Landry, the case that challenged the Louisiana map.

“While I think this map could have been better, there were easier, cleaner paths to accomplishing a second Black-majority district, I am pleased that the legislature rose to the challenge that they should have done multiple times before and pass the map,” added Lewis, who also serves a Public Service Commissioner in the state.

Lewis described the week as “full of turmoil and chaos,” but described the map’s passage on Friday as “a little bit of justice that allows us to move on.”

"We are one-third of the state of Louisiana. Louisiana has six congressional districts. I was an elementary school teacher and I was always taught that one-third of six is two. This is not some political hardship, it is simple, simple math of what should be fair, right, and just,” Lewis said.

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Democrats Likely Gain Additional Congressional Seat in Louisiana After Legislature Passes New Map