Louisiana

Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers. Governor Jeff Landry signed the nation’s first classroom Ten Commandments mandate and canceled the state’s largest coastal restoration project. He is also pushing a voucher expansion that his own Senate president wants scrapped.

The 2026 legislature faces a $113 million revenue shortfall. Teachers are getting pay cuts. Prison guards are getting raises. And 700,000 people on Medicaid are watching Congress decide whether to keep covering them.

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Redistricting

The case that gutted the Voting Rights Act started here. On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Louisiana v. Callais that Louisiana’s second Black-majority congressional district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The ruling requires plaintiffs to prove intentional discrimination, a standard Justice Kagan called “all but a dead letter” for the Voting Rights Act.

Louisiana lost the district a federal court had ordered drawn. Tennessee eliminated its only Black-majority district within 8 days of the ruling. Alabama’s map was vacated during active elections. Georgia called a special session.

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Criminal justice

Governor Landry reversed bipartisan criminal justice reforms in a 2024 special session. He eliminated parole for anyone convicted after August 1, 2024, and required prisoners to serve 85% of their sentences before any good-behavior reduction. He also added electrocution and nitrogen gas as execution methods.

The reforms he reversed had cut the nonviolent prison population by 55% and the overall population by 26% between 2017 and 2021. His proposed $798 million corrections budget for FY2026 represents a 9% increase. The legislature passed the bills in less than two weeks without typical cost debates.

85% minimum sentence that must be served under Landry’s new rules — up from 35%, effectively eliminating early release

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The state is putting the Ten Commandments in every classroom

HB 71 requires every Louisiana public school classroom to display the Ten Commandments on a poster at least 11x14 inches. Governor Landry signed it in 2024. Nine multifaith families sued.

The Fifth Circuit heard the case en banc in January 2026. On February 20, the court vacated the preliminary injunction on ripeness grounds. The ruling did not declare HB 71 constitutional. It said the challenge was premature because the law hadn’t been implemented yet.

On March 15, 2026, Landry ordered schools to start posting them.

The ACLU called the comment “insulting.” Future lawsuits remain possible now that displays are going up and plaintiffs can show actual harm.

Rep. Dodie Horton, who authored the bill, framed it as moral instruction. Sen. Royce Duplessis (D) responded: “If you want your kids to learn the Ten Commandments, you can take them to church.”

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Teachers are getting a pay cut while prison guards get raises

Constitutional Amendment 3 would have raised teacher pay by $2,250 and support worker pay by $1,125 in 2026-27. It failed by a wide margin on the May 16 ballot.

The result: teachers face a $2,000 pay cut and support workers face a $1,000 pay cut next school year. Maintaining the stipends would cost $200 million. Legislators say the money isn’t there.

Budget line	2026-27 change
Teacher stipend	-$2,000 per teacher
Support worker stipend	-$1,000 per worker
Prison guard raises	+$18.6 million
Total prison spending increase	+$82 million year-over-year

Caroline Roemer Shirley of the LA Association of Public Charter Schools put it plainly: “The more we invest on the front end in people, then maybe we won’t need as much on the back end” for the prison system. Larry Carter of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers pointed to the $2.4 billion Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund as a way to extend stipends for another year. The legislature hasn’t acted on it.

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The GATOR voucher program is paying for students already in private school

LA GATOR (Giving All True Opportunity to Rise) is Louisiana’s education savings account program. Year 1 funding: $43.5 million. Average per-student stipend: roughly $10,000.

75% of the 39,189 applicants were already attending private school

About 90% of GATOR participants previously received state vouchers through the older Louisiana Scholarship Program. Only about 700 families were truly new to the program. The state funded 5,600 students out of 35,000 eligible applicants.

Landry proposed doubling GATOR funding to $88 million. Senate President Cameron Henry (R-Metairie) blocked it. Henry told the American Press: “I think GATOR as a whole just needs to be scrapped and you need to come up with a different system to help these kids out.” The Senate Finance Committee pulled expansion funding on May 8 after the Revenue Estimating Conference cut the general fund forecast by $104 million.

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Louisiana is the first state to criminalize helping immigrants understand their rights

SB 15 (now Act 399) creates state criminal penalties for interfering with federal immigration enforcement. Penalties range from six months in jail and a $1,000 fine up to 10 years in prison for public officials. Louisiana is the first state in the country to pass a law like this.

The ACLU sued on December 3, 2025, arguing the law criminalizes protected speech, including legal rights education. ISLA, a New Orleans-based organization, is the lead plaintiff. They stopped offering Know Your Rights workshops because of the law.

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The governor canceled the state’s biggest coastal project while Louisiana disappears

Louisiana has lost roughly 1,900 square miles of land since the 1930s. That is an area the size of Delaware. At peak rates, the state loses a football field of coastal wetland every 34 minutes.

$3 billion Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project, canceled by Gov. Landry on July 17, 2025

The project was the centerpiece of Louisiana’s coastal restoration plan, funded by BP’s Deepwater Horizon settlement. Landry paused it in April 2025 citing cost overruns, then killed it three months later. He blamed predecessor John Bel Edwards, alleging “malfeasance in obtaining the permit.”

The cancellation puts $1.5 billion in unspent federal funds at risk. Louisiana may also have to repay $618 million already spent.

The state’s 50-year, $50 billion coastal master plan depends on funding sources that run out in 2032. The Trump administration is trying to defund the BRIC program, which has provided $4.5 billion nationally for disaster mitigation.

A Plaquemines Parish jury ordered Chevron to pay $745 million in a coastal damage case. AG Liz Murrill says total exposure across 40+ oil company lawsuits is “definitely in the multi-billions.”

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700,000 people are projected to lose Medicaid coverage

Medicaid expansion covers more than 700,000 low-income adults in Louisiana. In 2023, 32% of the state’s population was enrolled. The federal “One Big Beautiful Bill” cuts roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over 10 years. Louisiana is among 12 states expected to absorb half of all rural Medicaid spending reductions.

Threat	Impact on Louisiana
Work requirements (80 hrs/month)	21,000 to 132,000 adults lose coverage
Provider tax cap (6% to 3.5% by 2032)	Both state and federal funding decline
UnitedHealthcare exit (Dec 2025)	344,614 residents forced to find new plans
Rural hospital margins	44% already operate at a loss

The state cut ties with UnitedHealthcare on December 31, 2025, forcing 344,614 residents to find new Medicaid managed care plans. The Urban Institute estimates up to 132,000 Louisiana adults would lose Medicaid under the new federal work requirements. State officials project a lower number of 21,000. Either number represents people losing healthcare.

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Protect yourself right now

1. Check your voter registration. Louisiana’s next statewide elections are in 2027. Verify your status now at GeauxVote.com.

2. Know your Medicaid status. If you or someone you know is on Medicaid, check your renewal date and paperwork at healthy.la.gov. Missing a renewal notice is the most common way people lose coverage.

3. Attend your school board meeting. Ten Commandments displays, GATOR voucher impacts, and teacher pay cuts are all decided or implemented at the local level. Your district’s board sets the agenda. Show up.

4. Call your state legislator. The session is live. The capitol switchboard is 225-342-6945. Ask about teacher pay funding, GATOR accountability, and the coastal master plan timeline.

5. Document what you see. If your child’s school posts the Ten Commandments, if your Medicaid renewal gets denied, if your local organization stops offering immigration legal help, write it down. Dates, names, what happened. That documentation becomes evidence in future legal challenges.