A Louisiana legislative committee advanced a congressional redistricting plan Thursday with two majority-Black districts after making substantial changes to the original version of the proposal.
The House and Governmental Affairs Committee approved the Senate Bill 8 by Sen. Glen Womack, R-Harrisonburg, on a 14-1 vote after adopting the amendments without objection. The alterations include splitting East Baton Rouge parish into three congressional districts, which led to the lone vote against the bill from Rep. Denise Marcelle, D-Baton Rouge.
Rep. Les Farnum, R-Sulphur, brought forward the amendments, saying his primary goal was to keep Calcasieu Parish in a single congressional district. In order to do so, he had to take voters from East Baton Rouge Parish and move them into the 3rd Congressional District, currently held by St. Landry Parish-based U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins.
If the amended plan is enacted, Higgins would represent voters in the heart of the Capital City, including parts of the Garden District and neighborhoods around the LSU lakes.
The shape of the new majority-Black 6th Congressional District is largely maintained, slashing diagonally across the center of the state from Caddo Parish to a section of East Baton Rouge Parish. Farnum’s revisions make the new 6th District less compact but slightly increases its Black population along with the count in the 2nd District, which is already majority Black.
Farnum’s plan received substantial pushback from Marcelle, who objected to Farnum keeping his home parish in a single district while carving up East Baton Rouge Parish and the 3rd, 6th and 5th districts, the latter represented by U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, R-Monroe.
“I’m not voting for any map that has Baton Rouge split three ways because that’s insane. It’s insane,” Marcelle said.
Marcelle briefly left the committee room and was not present to object to the adoption of the amendments, although she later said she had intended to object.
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The committee later rejected amendments Marcelle put forward that plaintiffs in the lawsuit Robinson v. Landry prefer. They have sued to block the implementation of a congressional district map the legislature approved in 2022 that has only one majority-Black district. U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, an appointee of former President Barack Obama who is presiding over the case, has given lawmakers until Jan. 31 to redraw the lines to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
In December, judges with the 5th Circuit denied an appeal from Republican state officials, the defendants in the lawsuit before Dick, to end the case. The U.S. Supreme Court had previously declined to intervene in the matter.
If the legislature approves a congressional map before its special session ends Tuesday, the Robinson plaintiffs have the option of accepting it and letting it become law. If they reject the new boundaries, the map would replace the one being litigated. If the legislature does not approve a map, a trial on the merits of the 2022 version will occur, which would likely result in Dick redrawing the boundaries.
Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis, D-Baton Rouge, is among the Black voters who are plaintiffs in the case. He said the Farnum amendment was unnecessary but feels his fellow plaintiffs would support the plan if the two majority-Black districts meet Voting Rights Act standards.
Some Republicans have encouraged lawmakers to reject a map with two majority-Black districts, including U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and former state Sen. Sharon Hewitt, who chaired the Senate committee in 2022 that advanced the single Black district congressional plan. Both have suggested the federal court trial for the map from two years ago should move forward, potentially leading to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Reluctant Republicans in the legislature are moving forward with Womack’s map because it has support from Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who has urged lawmakers to approve a map with two majority-Black districts.
A spokesperson for Landry has not yet responded when asked whether Landry will support the map with Farnum’s amendments. Womack did not oppose the changes.
The Farnum amendments are the result of private negotiations that Womack said included Democratic Sens. Gary Carter of New Orleans and Cleo Fields of Baton Rouge, although Womack said Fields opposed splitting East Baton Rouge into three districts. Fields is widely believed to be considering a run for the new majority-Black seat in Congress.
The amendments were given to committee members late Thursday afternoon, more than five hours after the panel was scheduled to begin debate on Womack’s bill.
The lack of public notice on significant amendments — and the significant delay in debate posed by their drafting — presented an additional transparency problem on top of those already present in the rushed eight-day special session.
Steven Procopio, president of the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, said a litany of factors lead to minimal public input and a lack of transparency.
Not only were there no prefiled bills for the session, which would give the public an opportunity to consider the legislation before it is taken up, Procopio noted Landry gave no indication during his campaign for governor that he would ask the legislature to consider other election policy issues during the nine-day session. Most notably, he failed to mention his push to switch Louisiana to closed partisan primary elections.
“You have bills that are released in less than 24 hours before committee,” Procopio said. “You’re trying to get it done quickly. Citizens can’t make it (to the Capitol) because there’s an ice storm.”
“There’s a whole lot of transparency concerns,” he added.
BATON ROUGE, La. (KALB) – A bill signed into law on Friday, May 28, amends a current law to regulate cell phone usage in public schools by Louisiana students.
Act No. 313 applies additional restrictions on students and retains the current law prohibiting students from using cell phones while in a public school building, on public school grounds and on school buses.
Act 313, formerly known as Senate Bill 207, requires students to turn off their cellular devices and stow them away from sight until the end of official school hours. Language in the law expands what is considered as a “prohibited device”, to include other telecommunication devices such as pagers, intercoms and any “radio paging service.”
Punishments for ignoring the restrictions in place by the law can be any form of student-based disciplinary action allowed by the school system, including suspension of the student from the school.
State Senator Beth Mizell, the author of the law, claims the law is nothing but beneficial to both students and teachers in the classroom, citing that she has received several supporting testimonies from teachers during committee hearings on the law.
This is one of those rare situations where it’s good for the students and it’s good for the teachers. The ‘Teacher of the Year’ testified in committee, teachers in workforce groups have said this is the biggest distraction that they are fighting against in the classroom. So far this has been done nationally by Utah, Florida, it’s pending in Oklahoma, Vermont, Kansas because it’s an unheard-of situation to control that in the classroom
While the law was under consideration on the Senate floor, Mizell claimed that against all of her expectations, no one during any of the law’s committee hearings expressed concerns about student and general classroom safety.
The safety experts say the worst thing that can happen would be thirty kids all trying to get on their phones in the event that something happens. They’d much rather have the kids listen to the teacher and all follow one set of directions
Act No. 313 was signed into law by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on May 28. It went into effect immediately following its signing. More information on the law can be found here.
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Louisiana lawmakers are moving forward with a plan to divert state savings to a new fund to fix a lengthy list of crumbling infrastructure on state college and university campuses.
The Legislature approved House Bill 940 by Rep. Chris Turner, R-Ruston, which would provide money for maintenance work without going through the annual state construction budget. The bill cleared both chambers Friday unanimously.
Presently, each university system gets a few million dollars each year to address these deferred maintenance projects, far from enough to keep up with new projects added to the list each year. In total, there are approximately $2 billion worth of repairs needed at public colleges and universities in the state.
Turner said higher education leaders have asked instead for a set amount of money annually, which they could then decide how to spend themselves. This would prevent long-needed maintenance projects from filling up House Bill 2, the state construction budget, he said.
Lawmakers are considering using some money that would typically go into a state savings account to set up the College and University Deferred Maintenance and Capital Improvement Fund. About $70 million destined for the Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund will be diverted to the new fund, Senate President Cameron Henry said. The Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund currently has about $2.3 billion in it.
The nearly $2 billion deferred maintenance backlog presents a considerable problem on university campuses. Poor infrastructure manifests in Americans with Disabilities Act compliance issues, leaky libraries, disruptions in laboratories and myriad problems that impact student life, working conditions and faculty research.
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Turner’s bill sets up a 10-year program through which the Legislature could appropriate up to $2 billion dollars, approximately equal to deferred maintenance costs for all four state higher education systems, excluding those at university hospitals that could be paid for with federal dollars.
Of that amount, the Southern University System would be allocated $153 million, the Louisiana Community and Technical College System would get $253 million, the University of Louisiana System would receive $523 million, and $1.07 billion would be set aside for the LSU System.
Turner also wants to use funds from the state’s 1998 settlement with tobacco companies, though it would take a constitutional change to do so because the money is currently set aside for other purposes. If a constitutional convention or a special session on constitutional amendments isn’t convened this year, Turner said he would consider filing a constitutional amendment next year to access the tobacco funds, which could yield up to $98 million annually, a spokesperson for the state Treasury said. Further funds could also be borrowed.
Turner said he hoped the fund could clear deferred maintenance backlogs within seven to 10 years.
Addressing the deferred maintenance backlog is an important tool for recruiting and retaining students, he said.
Initial unemployment claims in Louisiana rose during the third week of May, increasing nearly 12% from the week prior, according to the figures released Friday morning by the Louisiana Workforce Commission.
There were 2,184 unemployment claims filed for the week ending May 25, up from the previous week’s 1,955. Claims are still down 10% from the same week a year prior.
Continued claims also increased, rising roughly 1.4% from the previous week.
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