Louisiana lawmakers resume work on remapping House districts

By SARA CLINE
Associated Press

BATON ROUGE (AP) — Louisiana lawmakers have returned to the Capitol amid mounting frustration to redesign political maps that a federal judge threw out for violating the Voting Rights Act. The Republican-dominated legislature and Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, have been fighting over the boundaries since February. It was then that lawmakers approved a congressional map with white majorities in five of six districts. Edwards has said throughout that a single majority-Black district violates the Voting Rights Act because the state is nearly one-third African American. Lawmakers have until June 20 to remap the political boundaries under court order and create a second majority Black district.