BATON ROUGE — Members of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus and the Louisiana House Democratic Caucus gathered in a Baton Rouge church that was once led by a civil rights leader to oppose Gov. Jeff Landry's decision to suspend the primary election for the U.S. Representative race so that new congressional district maps can be drawn following a Supreme Court decision deeming the most recent map unconstitutional.

Last week's Louisiana v. Callais decision ruled a map with a second Black-majority congressional district represented by Cleo Fields to be unconstitutional because, according to the majority of justices, it relied too heavily on race.

Kyle Green, the chair of the Louisiana House Democratic Caucus, said that Landry's decision to suspend the primary election calls into question the very principle of equality that civil rights leaders like T.J. Jemison fought for in the 1950s and '60s. 

"Do we honor that legacy, or do we chip away at it when it becomes inconvenient?" Green said, saying that the people of Louisiana deserve fair and orderly elections.

Green added that suspending an election after absentee ballots had been cast "injects confusion" into the democratic process and calls into question the institution of electoral representation as a whole. 

"Elections are not political chess pieces. You don't get to start the game, see how it's going and then flip the board when it's over," Green said of Landry and other Republican politicians' actions.

Green was joined by other state representatives and senators, as well as Rep. Cleo Fields, at Mt. Zion First Baptist Church, where Jemison once acted as a pastor. 

"We are here because of the decisions they have made," Green said, calling their decisions "the exact opposite of equality."

Edmond Jordan, the chair of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, said that the whole ordeal reminds him that, in 1868, after the abolition of slavery, there were 42 Black legislators. After this, the numbers diminished rapidly following gerrymandering, leaving Black Americans without proper representation for decades. 

Quoting Maya Angelou, Jordan said that he feels that "when people show you who they are, believe them," when it comes to those in power who both allowed for the elections to be suspended and advocated for the redistricting that would further disenfranchise predominantly blue-leaning minority voters. 

Multiple lawsuits have since been filed against state leaders over the suspended congressional race.

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