The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit on behalf of Louisiana voting rights groups on Friday, asking a state court to block the state’s governor, Jeff Landry, and secretary of state, Nancy Landry, from suspending congressional elections.
Landry suspended the state’s congressional primary election on Thursday – even after early voting had begun – to enact new districts for the 2026 election. The move came after the supreme court’s 6-3 decision in the Louisiana v Callais case on Wednesday, which invalidated swaths of the Voting Rights Act and declared that a Louisiana congressional district with a majority-nonwhite voting population violated equal protection provisions of the US constitution.
Other races on the ballot, as well as votes for amendments to Louisiana’s constitution, will continue, according to Landry’s order. While the congressional race will remain on the ballot, its votes will not be counted, Landry ordered.
The League of Women Voters of Louisiana, the Louisiana state conference of the NAACP, the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, and three individual voters filed suit in a state court in Baton Rouge on Friday, seeking a temporary restraining order. They argued that an order delaying an election had only previously been issued “due to natural disasters or similar emergencies that posed threats to health and safety”, and that a supreme court decision did not constitute state of emergency under Louisiana law.
“Furthermore, the executive order sows chaos into an already-confusing election and puts Louisianians’ votes at risk, especially those who have already cast absentee ballots,” the NAACP said in a prepared statement.
The three plaintiffs named in the suit –Ambrose Sims Jr, Joyce Davis Sims and Phyllis V Mercadel – are each Louisiana voters who have already cast absentee ballots in the 16 May primary in Louisiana’s fifth congressional district as drawn today. This district would probably be dismantled by the state’s Republican mapmakers, following the Callais decision.
A separate federal lawsuit filed on Thursday in Louisiana federal court seeks immediate action to restore Louisiana’s suspended congressional primary elections.
Lindsey Garcia, a Democratic congressional candidate in Louisiana’s fifth district, filed suit in federal court on Thursday, shortly after the governor announced the suspension of the congressional election, arguing that the number of absentee ballots that had already been returned by mail was “material” and substantial, creating constitutional due process considerations and a violation of federal election-timing laws.
