Federal appeals court blocks Louisiana's new congressional map in blow to GOP

Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejects Louisiana's congressional redistricting map, dealing blow to Republicans by ruling it violates Voting Rights Act through racial gerrymandering.

Breanne Deppisch is a national politics reporter for Fox News Digital covering the Trump administration, with a focus on the Justice Department, FBI, and other national news. 

They also affirmed the district court's ruling that the map in question violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by, "'packing' Black voters into a small number of majority-Black districts, and ‘cracking’ other Black communities across multiple districts, thereby depriving them of the opportunity to form effective voting blocs." 

Judges on the panel also rejected the state's contention that conditions in Louisiana have changed enough to render race-conscious remedies obsolete.