ACLU of Louisiana Statement on the Passage of SB 121

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact: Jesse Vad, [email protected]

NEW ORLEANS — Today, the Louisiana Legislature passed Senate Bill 121, a racist congressional map that eliminates one of Louisiana's two majority-Black congressional districts and returns this state to a political landscape that looks more like Jim Crow than a multiracial democracy.

SB 121, authored by Sen. Jay Morris of West Monroe was rammed through the legislature in a matter of weeks. It does exactly what it was designed to do: consolidate white political power by cracking Black communities apart and drowning their votes in Republican-dominated districts. If Governor Landry signs the bill, Louisiana will have gone from two majority-Black congressional districts to one, in a state where nearly one in three residents is Black.

This is a racial gerrymander hiding behind the thin veneer of partisanship. The bill's own sponsor acknowledged on the Senate floor that his goal was to pack as many Democrats as possible into a single district, and in Louisiana, where 80 percent of the Republican Party is white, that is a racial calculation dressed in partisan clothing. Presenting redistricting maps without racial demographic data, as lawmakers did throughout this process, does not make race disappear from the analysis. Hiding behind partisanship is not only flimsy, it is cowardly.

As Rep. Edmond Jordan said on the House floor: "How many racist acts can you participate in until you yourself are considered racist?" We are asking the same question of every lawmaker who voted yes, and of the governor who is now positioned to sign this map into law.

The communities targeted by this map — Black voters in Baton Rouge, in Shreveport, along the corridor that Rep. Cleo Fields has represented — did not stay quiet. They showed up at the Capitol in the middle of the night. They testified for hours into the early morning. They made their voices heard at every step of a process designed to minimize their input. That resistance is not over.

The ACLU of Louisiana is pursuing every available legal option to challenge this map and protect the voting rights of Black Louisianans.

We will continue to mobilize, to register, to turn out in unprecedented numbers and make clear time and time again that this is not what Louisianans want. The people of this state will not kneel to a handful of lawmakers who are determined to revive Jim Crow. This fight is just beginning. And we will not stop until the people of this state have the fair representation they are owed.