A panel of three federal judges struck down Louisiana's new congressional lines on Tuesday, surprisingly throwing a last-minute twist into the 2024 congressional map.

Earlier this year, the Louisiana legislature redrew the state's congressional map to add a second Black-majority district after a court ruled that the old map violated the Voting Rights Act by not giving Black voters enough representation. This turned a solid-red seat, the 6th District, into a solid-blue seat, giving Democrats a near-guaranteed pickup this fall.

But the new 6th District was awkwardly shaped, stretching diagonally across the state from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, giving rise to complaints it was a racial gerrymander — essentially, that it was drawn based on race above all else. These three judges agreed, saying the district violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

That doesn't necessarily mean Louisiana won't get a second Black-majority, safely Democratic district, though. It's easy to draw such a district that's more compact, going from Baton Rouge up the Mississippi River. It remains to be seen what the state will do next; the judicial panel will meet again on May 6 to discuss next steps.

Time's up, Supreme Court! That's what a panel of three federal judges declared on Thursday, as they decided that South Carolina must use the congressional map it used in 2022 in the 2024 election as well.

The panel had previously struck down South Carolina's 1st District as a racial gerrymander because it did not have enough Black voters, which had turned the one-time swing district into a more safely Republican seat. However, Republicans appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, which has been sitting on the case for months. The three-judge panel finally decided that it was too late to make any changes for 2024, given that Monday is the deadline for congressional candidates to file to run. As a result, Democrats will miss out on a chance to flip another district in their favor this year.

On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the state's congressional map. The order was a blow to Democrats, who had argued that the map unfairly advantaged Republicans. It was also unexpected after liberals took control of the court with the election of Janet Protasiewicz in April 2023; Protasiewicz did not participate in the order.

As a result, Wisconsin will use its current congressional map, which has six Republican-leaning seats and two Democratic-leaning seats, in the 2024 election.

This week, New York's Democratic-controlled legislature took up the congressional map proposed by the state's bipartisan redistricting commission … and largely left it unchanged.

On Monday, after the legislature voted down the commission's proposal, many people assumed they would replace it with an aggressive Democratic gerrymander that would help the party in its quest to flip the U.S. House. But that's not what happened. Instead, the legislature passed a map with only minor tweaks from the commission's, which in turn was pretty close to the old congressional map drawn by a court-appointed special master in 2022.

Based on the results of the 2020 presidential election, no district will shift by more than 4 percentage points of margin. The biggest change is in the 22nd District, which now would have voted for Biden by 11 points, making it harder for Republican Rep. Brandon Williams to win reelection. Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi and Pat Ryan also got a little safer in their districts, while the legislature also did a favor for Republican Rep. Nick LaLota, turning his 1st District from a narrow Biden district to a narrow Trump district.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the new map into law on Wednesday night.

Alabama is furthest along in terms of having a new congressional map for 2024. Back in 2021, the Republican-controlled legislature drew Alabama a congressional map that had six majority-white seats and one majority-Black seat — despite it being possible to draw a map with two majority-Black districts. Voting-rights advocates sued, and in January 2022, a federal court agreed that the map discriminated against Black voters and had to be redrawn.

Alabama appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in June 2023, the court handed down a landmark decision that upheld the Voting Rights Act and confirmed that Alabama had to redraw its map. In July, the legislature did so — but the new map still didn’t have a second majority-Black seat. The lower court quickly struck down that map too, and the Supreme Court rejected a Hail Mary appeal of that decision.

The lower court will now choose a new congressional map for Alabama, to be used in 2024. A court-appointed special master has drawn three possible options, all of which would create a second majority-Black seat. And because Black voters so consistently vote Democratic, in partisan terms, that means Democrats will almost certainly pick up a House seat in Alabama next year. In the three proposals, the new 2nd District would have voted for President Biden by anywhere from 10 to 13 percentage points.