For most of its existence, the 6th congressional district has contained a significant portion of Baton Rouge. Since its creation, its boundaries have migrated from a position astraddle theMississippi River to completely east of the Mississippi River and more recently astraddle the river again.
For decades prior to 1972, the district was virtually coterminous with theFlorida Parishes. In 1972, the district shedSt. Tammany Parish to the1st congressional district, and since then several redistrictings have incrementally moved the district's boundaries westward so that it has shed bothWashington andTangipahoa parishes (includingHammond, home ofJames H. Morrison, who represented the district for 24 years, the longest tenure of anyone ever to represent the district) to the 1st district.
For most of its existence, the district's lines generally followed parish lines. In the 1990s redistricting, however, most of the district's black voters were transferred to the black-majority 4th district. Those lines, however, were thrown out in 1995 when the 4th was ruled to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, and from 1996 to 2013, the 6th included all of Baton Rouge. After the 2010 redistricting, a gash in western Baton Rouge, including most of the city's black precincts, was transferred to theNew Orleans–based 2nd district.
Following a court ruling striking down Louisiana's 2022 congressional map for violating theVoting Rights Act, a new map enacted by a special legislative session on January 22, 2024 significantly redrew the 6th. It now stretches fromCaddo Parish in the northwest toEast Baton Rouge Parish, and will include a majority African-American voting-age population. Most of Baton Rouge's whiter and wealthier portions, along withLouisiana State University (LSU), were shifted to the 5th district. Even without LSU, the district includes two state universities,Southern in Baton Rouge andNorthwestern State inNatchitoches.
For the119th and successive Congresses (based on the districts drawn following a 2023 court order), the district contains all or portions of the following parishes and communities.[5][6]
^Kemp's wife, Lallie, was elected in the1933 special election; however, a dispute over the election meant neither she nor Sanders Jr. took office before the election was annulled by the House of Representatives on January 29, 1934.[8]
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