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.

Texas’s congressional map faces a number of legal challenges that federal courts have consolidated into one broader lawsuit. The core complaint centers on allegations that the GOP-controlled Texas legislature diluted Latino voter strength in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The plaintiffs claim mapmakers failed to add more seats with a majority Latino citizen voting-age population despite Latinos’ significant contribution to the state’s population growth and the state’s two-seat gain in reapportionment. Additionally, they accuse the mapmakers of weakening Latino voting strength in Texas’s 15th District, which the GOP flipped in the 2022 midterms.

The federal lower court has not proceeded with the case, however, in part because of delays regarding disputes over access to documents by legislators and other relevant parties. This has affected the process of discovery, which allows each side in a case to gather information about the evidence that will be presented at trial. As a result, it’s difficult to say how long it will be until this case moves forward. Considering Texas’s candidate filing deadline for its 2024 congressional primaries is Dec. 11, it’s very unlikely this case will be resolved before the next election cycle is fully underway.