Louisiana Legislature Moves on Two Bills the Callais Cascade Required: a New Five-to-One Map and a Reverted Open Primary
Five days after the Callais cascade article ran, the bills it anticipated have taken shape on the legis.la.gov docket. The Louisiana Senate passed SB 121 on May 14 along party lines, 27 to 10 — a congressional map that reduces the state's majority-Black districts from two to one and absorbs Representative Cleo Fields' Sixth District into surrounding Republican-leaning territory. The same week, both chambers adopted the conference report on HB 842, which voids the May 16 and June 27 U.S. House ballots, returns the 2026 congressional races to a jungle primary, and sets a November 3 open primary with a December 12 runoff. As of Tuesday morning SB 121 sits with the House awaiting committee assignment; HB 842 has been signed by both chamber presidents but not yet by Governor Jeff Landry. Neither bill is law. Litigation has not yet been filed.
The day after the Supreme Court decided Louisiana v. Callais, Governor Jeff Landry suspended the state's U.S. House primaries by executive order and gave the legislature until July 15 to draw a new map. Five days after Wire's overview of the resulting cascade across four states, the Louisiana side of that story has taken concrete legislative form. Two bills now carry the work the executive order deferred: one redraws the congressional districts, the other rebuilds the election calendar around the redraw.
Both bills are on the legis.la.gov docket for the 2026 Regular Session. Neither is yet law.
SB 121: a five-to-one map, one majority-Black district
Senate Bill 121, by Senator Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, passed the Louisiana Senate on May 14 on a 27-10 party-line vote and was reengrossed for the House. The bill replaces the post-Robinson map struck down in Callais with one that keeps a single majority-Black district and redraws the remaining five seats as Republican-leaning.
The Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee heard the bill over a session that ran from 7 p.m. on May 12 to 4:30 a.m. on May 13. The committee advanced SB 121 on a 4-3 party-line vote after rejecting a competing two-majority-Black-district proposal. Floor amendments were adopted before passage on May 14.
The new District 2 — currently held by Representative Troy Carter, D-New Orleans — is built around the Mississippi River corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Per the engrossed bill text, the district is composed of all of St. James Parish plus listed precincts in nine other parishes: Ascension, Assumption, East Baton Rouge, Iberville, Jefferson, Orleans, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, and West Baton Rouge. The bill's own plan statistics put the district at 776,324 total population and 602,109 voting-age residents, with the largest VAP shares in Orleans (264,789), Jefferson (148,126), and East Baton Rouge (83,800) parishes. December 2025 voter registration in the proposed district is 60.9% Democratic; the remaining five districts each show Democratic registration between 24.6% and 34.1%.
The most consequential geographic change is to the Sixth District. The 2024 map drawn under Robinson v. Ardoin had configured a second majority-Black district anchored in Baton Rouge and extending northwest toward Shreveport. Under SB 121 that district disappears: parts of the old Sixth are absorbed into the Third Congressional District (Southwest Louisiana), and the remainder becomes a majority-White, Republican-leaning seat running from St. Landry Parish to St. John the Baptist Parish.
The incumbent of the old Sixth, Representative Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, would have no compact district that retains his voter base. Asked about the committee vote that advanced the bill, Fields said: "The demographics of this state demand fair representation. The history of this state demands it." Of SB 121's progress to the full Senate, he added: "That bill may have failed, but its principles have not. As SB 121 moves to the full Senate, I will be fighting to ensure those principles are not left behind."