The ถถา๕h State Senate passed a redistricting bill Thursday that would split St. Landry Parish into three congressional districts.
The original bill featured a map that showed most of the parish being drawn into the new 6th district, which was at the center of the Supreme Court decision that triggered the statewide redistricting effort, with additional portions in the 3rd district represented by St. Landry Parish native and Republican Clay Higgins.
The amended version sees St. Landry split between the 3rd, 5th, and 6th districts. The amendment emerged from committee late Wednesday. The full Senate passed the revised bill Thursday along party lines, with St. Landry Parishโs two state senators, Republican Caleb Kleinpeter and Democrat Gerald Boudreaux, voting yes and no respectively.
Each congressional district in Louisiana is required to have as close to 776,292 constituents as possible, with only slight deviations being permissible. While larger population centers often have to be broken up in order to satisfy these requirements, St. Landry is the only parish to be divided into more than two districts in the bill, despite being only the 16th most populous.
โItโs not the first time thatโs happened,โ said St. Landry Parish President Jessie Bellard. โIt was like that for a while, but I donโt think having us split three different ways helped us at all then. It just gave them more reason to ignore us.โ
From 2013 to 2023, St. Landry was split into the 5th, 4th and 3rd congressional districts, all of which exclusively elected Republican representatives during that 10-year span.
While St. Landry Parish has voted reliably Republican in presidential elections since 2008, many voters continue to support Democrats in local and down-ballot races. That split has made the parish a key battleground in congressional elections.
โWe have over 6,000 more registered Democrats in this state than Republicans, but weโre being crammed into three districts with solid Republican majorities,โ Bellard said. โItโs not going to be better for us because now weโll have no leverage.โ
Bellard also worries that splitting the parish into three congressional districts โ where St. Landry would make up a small share of each โ could weaken its ability to compete for federal grants.
โWe get a lot of money from grants, and thatโs been in part because we have one person we can go to who feels itโs their responsibility to advocate for us,โ Bellard said. โRight now we go from a parish with 49,000 voters all in one district to about 17,000 spread across three. That means we donโt have much impact on the outcome in any of those districts, and as a result, they may or may not fight for us as hard.โ
St. Landry Parish would represent roughly 4% of the voting population in each of the three congressional districts under the proposed map.
The legislation must still pass the ถถา๕h House of Representatives before it can take effect. While it is expected to pass, new changes to the boundaries could still be proposed.
A detailed version of the map can be viewed on the by searching for SB 121.