In federal cases where plaintiffs argue that a state’s map discriminated against a minority group, we’re predominantly seeing two grounds for suits. First, cases can center around alleged violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits electoral practices that discriminate against a racial or language minority group. In Section 2 cases, the plaintiffs will argue that district lines diluted the voting influence of a minority group, often by “cracking” it to spread it across multiple districts or “packing” it into fewer districts.

Cases can also focus on alleged violations of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments. Specifically, claims are built around the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which courts have ruled protects against the improper use of race in drawing districts — racial gerrymandering — and the 15th Amendment’s protections against limiting voting rights based on race. These legal frameworks are related — the VRA was created as an enforcement mechanism for the 15th Amendment — so these lines of argument can overlap.

Part of Florida’s congressional map could also change due to litigation over racial discrimination. Under the state’s old lines, a majority-minority 5th District with a plurality-Black population had stretched from Tallahassee to Jacksonville that regularly sent a Black Democrat to Congress. However, under pressure from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida legislature drew a map that dissolved the old 5th, leaving only majority-white and solidly Republican seats in northern Florida.

In early September, a lower state court ruled that the map violated the state constitution because it had diminished the ability of Black voters to elect a candidate of their choice. In some ways, the ruling wasn’t a shock because the state had agreed in court proceedings that the map ran afoul of the state’s anti-diminishment provision. But the state argued that provision should be unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, signaling a conservative line of argument against voting rights protections that could appear in future state and federal cases.

While unsuccessful in lower court, the state’s argument might find more receptive judges higher up the Florida judicial ladder. Although a state appeals court will consider the case first, it will likely end up in front of Florida’s Supreme Court. And the high court could decide for the state, especially because DeSantis’s five appointments to the court’s seven seats have made it much more conservative. In the meantime, civil rights groups have launched a second track of litigation in federal court, where they argued in late September hearings that the map violated the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Similar to Alabama and Louisiana, Georgia’s congressional map faces a legal challenge in federal court that claims its district lines dilute Black voting power, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The current map has four districts in which Black voters make up a majority or close to one, but the plaintiffs argue that because Black residents made up a significant portion of Georgia’s population growth — they now constitute one-third of all Georgians — the state should have one more district in which Black voters have sufficient clout to elect a member of their choice. A new map would probably create an opportunity for Democrats to pick up a seat; Republicans currently hold a nine-to-five edge in the state’s 14-seat congressional delegation.

However, the Georgia case is well behind the timelines in Alabama and Louisiana for any sort of final resolution. A lower federal court heard the case in early September and the judge told both sides to expect a ruling by Thanksgiving. But even if the lower court sides with the plaintiffs, the state would likely appeal, so it’s difficult to know just how long this process may take, much less what the result will be.

It’s unclear whether Louisiana will end up with a new congressional map ahead of the 2024 election. Like Alabama, Louisiana has faced litigation over claims that its district lines impermissibly diluted the influence of Black voters. In 2022, the GOP-controlled legislature implemented a map that maintained the state’s status quo of one majority-Black seat among six total districts. But Democrats and voting rights advocates argued that Louisiana, which has a population that’s about one-third Black, should have a second district in which Black voters could elect the member of their choice. A lower federal court agreed, ruling in June 2022 that the map violated the Voting Rights Act and ordering the state to draw a new map. The legislature appealed, but the Supreme Court put the Louisiana case on hold while deliberating over the similar redistricting case in Alabama. This allowed Louisiana’s map to be used in the 2022 election.

But a redraw of Louisiana’s map became a renewed possibility after the Supreme Court ruled in June 2023 that Alabama’s congressional lines violated the VRA. Following that decision, SCOTUS lifted its hold on the Louisiana case. Nonetheless, the case remains up in the air following a late September decision by a federal appeals court that canceled the lower court’s next hearing in early October, in which it was expected to approve a remedial map for Louisiana after the state failed to propose an alternate map in 2022. The plaintiffs have asked the Supreme Court for emergency relief to block the appeals court’s decision, arguing the appeals court ruled improperly and in a way that could delay the potential implementation of a new map beyond 2024. In the meantime, the appeals court’s decision gives Louisiana more time to defend the current map and consider new lines.

Last week, Louisiana's state legislature passed a new congressional map, which Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law on Monday. A federal court had previously ruled that the state's map violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black representation. To avoid further litigation or even a court-drawn map, Louisiana's Republican-controlled government implemented a second majority-Black seat — the 6th District — that stretches diagonally southeast from Shreveport in the northwest to Baton Rouge in south-central Louisiana. Along with the New Orleans-based 2nd District, Louisiana now has two majority-Black, Democratic-leaning seats: President Joe Biden would have carried the new 6th by 20 percentage points in 2020, while the 2nd would have been Biden +36. As a result, Louisiana's six-member U.S. House delegation will likely go from 5-1 Republican to 4-2 Republican after the 2024 election.

The final map had Landry's endorsement, and the new lines mainly endanger the political future of Republican Rep. Garret Graves, who represents the current 6th District. Graves alienated some fellow Louisiana Republicans last fall — including Landry himself — by supporting one of Landry's GOP opponents in Louisiana's gubernatorial election and by not publicly backing U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise's bid for the speakership. To create a second majority-Black seat, Louisiana Republicans chose to dismantle Graves's seat instead of the 5th District held by GOP Rep. Julia Letlow, whom many Republican legislators wanted to protect as the state's only woman in Congress.

Looking ahead, however, there are three outstanding questions: What will Graves do, will the new map survive legal scrutiny and which Democrat might represent the new 6th District?

Graves has said he will run again, but he's unlikely to run in a Democratic-leaning seat, so he may instead challenge Letlow in the new 5th District. Graves currently represents 43 percent of the redrawn district, while Letlow represents the rest, based on an analysis by Daily Kos Elections. But the Republican vote may be even more closely-divided: Letlow currently represents about 51 percent of 2020 Trump voters in the new seat versus Graves's 49 percent. Democrats will have a chance to weigh in, too, under the state's "jungle primary" format, in which all candidates regardless of party run on the November election day, and if a candidate wins a majority, that person wins; otherwise, there's a runoff between the top-two vote-getters. This won't be the setup beyond 2024, though: A new law will establish closed party primaries for congressional elections starting in 2026.

However, Graves also believes that the courts will rule against the new map — and he may have reason to hope. The federal court that ruled against the current map will review the new lines, and Graves has argued the new map ignored many communities of interest in its pursuit of a Black majority. This could be important: Back in the 1990s, federal courts twice deemed Louisiana's congressional map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, forcing redraws before the 1994 election and again before the 1996 election. The second time was due to a similar "backslash" district that ran from Shreveport to Baton Rouge. This time around, it was possible to draw a more compact majority-Black seat running north from Baton Rouge up the Mississippi River to the state's northeast. However, that would've meant dismantling Letlow's 5th District, which Republicans didn't want to do.

But if the new map remains in place, the new 6th District is likely to elect a Democrat. And one leading possibility is a familiar name: Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields, who announced his candidacy on Tuesday. Fields has a direct connection back to Louisiana's redistricting episodes in the 1990s. At the age of 29, Fields won a Z-shaped majority-Black seat in 1992 drawn to connect Baton Rouge and Shreveport, then won the redrawn "backslash" seat in 1994 before losing Louisiana's 1995 gubernatorial election (Fields didn't seek reelection in 1996 after the second redraw put him in a Republican-leaning, majority-white seat). Fields has become a cross-party Landry ally in the state legislature, which might help explain why Landry supported a congressional map that could be tailor-made for Fields. Still, the district will probably attract a few Democratic aspirants.