Which states could get new congressional maps in 2024?

On Monday, Louisiana's Republican-controlled legislature convened a special session that will primarily focus on redrawing the state's congressional map. The legislature's gathering came in response to a federal ruling that the current lines violate the Voting Rights Act, which ordered the state to draw a second majority-Black seat among the state's six districts. At present, Louisiana has just one majority-Black seat, the 2nd District, which runs from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Due to racially-polarized voting, any map with a second majority-Black district is guaranteed to provide Democrats with a good chance of capturing a second Louisiana seat, a result that would cut the GOP's advantage in the Pelican State from 5-1 to 4-2.

Legislators have proposed multiple maps, but each takes a different approach to drawing a second majority-Black seat. Two Republican-drawn maps exemplify this. In the state House of Representatives, one plan would keep both seats in central and southern Louisiana, with a New Orleans-based district that President Biden would've carried by 33 percentage points in 2020 and a Biden +14 seat around Baton Rouge. Alternatively, a state Senate proposal supported by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry would create a Biden +19 "slash" district that stretches from Baton Rouge to Shreveport in the northwestern part of the state, with a Biden +36 New Orleans-based seat in the southeast.

How the legislature draws a second seat will help determine the fates of Republican Reps. Garrett Graves and Julia Letlow. Some legislators have prioritized preserving Letlow's position as the state's lone woman in Congress, and both of the Republican proposals above largely keep her seat intact. For his part, Graves supported one of Landry's GOP opponents in the 2023 gubernatorial race, which may cost him politically as both GOP proposals would reshape Graves's 6th District into a majority-Black seat. Conversely, Democratic map proposals in the legislature would convert Letlow's 5th District into a majority-Black seat that largely runs north from Baton Rouge along the Mississippi River.

Some Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, who represents Louisiana's 4th District, have stated their preference to keep fighting the order to redraw the map because of the likelihood that a new map will cost the GOP a seat in the closely-divided U.S. House. But early indications out of the legislature suggest Louisiana will produce new lines with a second majority-Black seat.

On Thursday, the federal judge who had struck down Georgia’s old congressional map as a racial gerrymander gave his stamp of approval to the new congressional map passed earlier this month by the Georgia legislature. The map will now go into effect for the 2024 election, although Democrats who are unhappy with the decision may still try to challenge it in court.

In response to the judge’s finding that the old map discriminated against Black voters, the new map creates a new majority-Black district, the 6th, in the western Atlanta suburbs — but it achieved this by dismantling a different majority-minority district, the 7th, in the eastern suburbs. As a result, the partisan breakdown of Georgia’s districts remains nine Republican-leaning seats and five Democratic-leaning ones.

Democrats, who of course wouldn’t mind flipping one of those Republican seats, have insisted that the old 7th District, whose voting-age population was 33 percent white, 30 percent Black and 21 percent Hispanic, was protected by the Voting Rights Act, and may continue to press their case against this new map. In the meantime, though, all eyes are on Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath, who currently represents the 7th District and would almost certainly lose if she seeks reelection there. She could either retire or decide to run in the new 6th, despite the fact that she does not live there.

For months, the U.S. House delegation from New York has been waiting to hear whether they’d run in the same districts in 2024 as they did in 2022. Now, they have their answer — or, at least part of it.

On Tuesday, New York’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, ordered the Independent Redistricting Commission to submit a revised congressional redistricting plan to the state Legislature, based on data from the 2020 Census. But what that map looks like — and which incumbents could find themselves in competitive seats — remains to be seen. The court order requested that the IRC submit a new map to the state legislature “on the earliest possible date,” with a firm deadline of Feb. 28.

Much of the drama in the coming months will center around local politics, with conflicting personalities and interests complicating what should be a relatively mundane process. But New York is home to five Republican freshmen who represent districts that Biden carried — plus former Rep. George Santos’ now-vacant seat in a sixth district that Biden carried. With Democrats in need of five additional House seats to win the majority, the race for the House runs straight through the Empire State.

But there’s little reason to expect the IRC to agree on a map this time around, when it failed to do so just two years ago. That would put map-drawing back into the hands of the state legislature — and, most likely, back into a series of court cases poking holes at the constitutionality of the new lines.

“It’s likely that there will be litigation unless both major political parties agree on a deal,” said Blair Horner, executive director of New York Public Interest Research Group, adding, “It’s hard to imagine why the Republicans would agree to any deal, given that the stakes are so high because control of the House may well run through New York in 2024.”

At least one more House race will be held on the current maps: the special election to replace Santos, scheduled for Feb. 13. In that race, county party leaders select the nominees in lieu of a traditional primary.

The big question now is which New York Republicans end up getting the short end of the stick. As Democrats celebrated the court’s decision, Rep. Mike Lawler, one of the freshman Republicans who represents a district that Biden carried, spoke out against it, characterizing it as a “pathetic” ploy meant to favor Democrats. Another Biden-district freshman Republican, Rep. Marc Molinaro said of the decision, “There’s nothing fair about this.”

On Friday, Republican legislators in Georgia released their long-awaited proposal to redraw Georgia's congressional map after a court struck it down in October for violating the Voting Rights Act. But it's unlikely to satisfy advocates for more nonwhite (and Democratic) representation.

The proposed map creates a new majority-Black district, the 6th, in the western Atlanta suburbs, as ordered by the court. But it also dismantles the 7th District in the eastern Atlanta suburbs, turning it from a majority-minority seat into one that is 67 percent white. The partisan upshot is that Georgia would maintain its current split of nine Republican-leaning seats and five Democratic-leaning seats (because the 6th District would flip from red to blue but the 7th would flip from blue to red).

Democrats and voting-rights advocates are already arguing that the new map is still illegal because of what it did to the 7th District. Indeed, the judge who struck down Georgia's old map wrote in his ruling, "The state cannot remedy the [Voting Rights Act] Section 2 violations described herein by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere in the plans." However, it's not clear if the old 7th District was protected by the Voting Rights Act. At 33 percent white, 30 percent Black and 21 percent Hispanic, it did not have a majority (or anything close) of a certain type of voter. It did have a combined Black and Hispanic majority, and courts have previously ruled that such coalition districts may be protected by the Voting Rights Act as long as both minority groups vote similarly (among other preconditions). However, it's not clear if more conservative courts (i.e., the U.S. Supreme Court) will agree in this case. Therefore, you can expect further legal battles over this map should it pass the Georgia legislature.