BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — The fight over legislative maps carries into the second week as lawmakers try to redistrict the state. Some legislators are questioning the legality of some of the proposed maps.
After long closed-door debates, the House district map was released late Friday. With 105 seats to account for and some major population shifts, lawmakers are tackling how to protect their seats all while complying with the Civil Rights Act.
One legislator made a final plea to his colleagues to keep his district whole.
“This kind of hurts me to my heart that you would break my district up to this point,” State Rep. Kenny Cox, a Natchitoches Democrat, said.
Rep. Cox’s district is disappearing under a map proposed by Speaker Clay Schexnayder. HB14 places District 23 in New Orleans due to the population loss in his area and it will remain a majority-minority district.
He gave a passionate speech about the history of the area and how losing the minority district in that region is devastating. He is concerned the Black voters left behind when his district moves will not be properly represented in the predominantly white districts that would remain.
“From slavery to Jim Crow to the right to vote, we’re suppressing… the right to vote. I think this is really not constitutional,” Rep. Cox said.
Rep. John Stefanski has been the one behind the drawing of this map, which he believes is legal under the Civil Rights Act.
“In Louisiana, I believe these regions have proper representation based on the population that they have and the people that make up that population,” Rep. Stefanski, a Crowley Republican, said.
He said when he saw the population losses in the north, legislators asked him to move a district with a term-limited member — which Cox is.
“I looked at the four term-limited districts here in the state, did a deep [analysis] of their population, and one of the things that was apparently evident was District 23 was the lowest populated of those four,” Rep. Stefanski said.
Outside groups and democratic representatives continue to question why more majority-minority districts aren’t being added to the map. Currently, all the proposed maps keep the minority districts at 29 out of the 105 despite the Black population being over one-third of the state.
Rep. Royce Duplessis voluntarily deferred his map stating he wants to work on his map more to go further in minority representation. His map takes District 5 and places it in New Orleans — which is held by term-limited Rep. Alan Seabaugh. The map would keep Rep. Cox’s district in the north.
“I don’t think it’s been clearly explained why that district, given that it is a minority seat, given the current House of Representatives is not made up of 33% majority-minority seats, why we should be doing the least in just doing a swap,” Rep. Duplessis said.
Other representatives shared their frustration over the changes to their districts in the proposed map. Rep. Roy Daryl Adams represents East and West Feliciana. His district would lose West Feliciana Parish completely and would pick up some of north Baton Rouge’s population. He says he wants to keep his district whole since they are communities of interest.
None of the maps were voted on and will be taken up again Tuesday. There will also be the first House floor debate. They will go over the Republican proposals for Congress, BESE, and the Public Service Commission.