BATON ROUGE — Multiple lawsuits have been filed in state and federal court challenging Gov. Jeff Landry's executive order suspending Louisiana's May 16 congressional primary elections after thousands of voters had already cast ballots.

Landry signed the order on April 30, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which found the state's congressional map to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

The order suspends the closed party primaries for U.S. House seats for the May 16 and June 27 election cycles, leaving all other races on the ballot.

Secretary of State Nancy Landry certified a state of emergency before the governor issued the order, saying the certification was "a mandatory step prior to the Governor issuing an executive order suspending the upcoming Louisiana U.S. House races."

Three separate legal challenges were filed over the next 36 hours, two in the 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge and one in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.

The lawsuits argue the governor had no legal authority to cancel the elections because Louisiana law limits emergency powers to situations involving physical threats to public safety, not court rulings.

Plaintiffs in all three cases point out that absentee ballots had already been mailed and returned before the order was issued. Louisiana sent ballots to military and overseas voters on or around April 1 and began distributing ballots to other eligible mail voters on April 26. More than 4,000 absentee ballots have already been received in East Baton Rouge alone, according to Registrar of Voters Steve Raborn.

The National Council of Jewish Women's Greater New Orleans Section, along with three individual voters who had already returned mail ballots, filed one of the state court petitions. The petition argues the Supreme Court's stay of the lower court's injunction against  the state's congressional map had not been lifted, and the election should proceed as scheduled.

A second state court petition was filed by the Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP, the League of Women Voters of Louisiana, the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice and three individual voters who had already cast absentee ballots.

That petition argues the executive order violates the Louisiana Constitution's separation of powers because setting election dates is a legislative function, not an executive one.

A federal lawsuit was filed by Lindsay Garcia, a Democratic candidate for the 5th Congressional District, and voter Eugene Collins. It names Gov. Landry, Secretary of State Nancy Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill as defendants.

That complaint argues the order violates the First, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Elections Clause, the Voting Rights Act and federal election timing statutes. It also contends the Supreme Court's judgment in Callais was not yet final because the 25-day window for rehearing petitions had not closed.

The federal filing notes that more than 100,000 absentee ballots had already been mailed to eligible voters statewide, including elderly, disabled, hospitalized, student and military voters.

All three lawsuits seek court orders requiring the May 16 elections to proceed as scheduled and for already-cast ballots to be counted.

In-person early voting for the May 16 primary was scheduled to begin May 2 at 8:30 a.m. There are 28 candidates running across Louisiana's six congressional districts. The candidate qualifying deadline had passed on Feb. 13.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Western District Court affirmed that Louisiana cannot move forward with the election using the struck-down map. The court order gives the state three days from the official judgment to present a plan on how it will address SCOTUS's issues with the map. That judgment is expected to be official in 31 days. That panel is the same as the one that struck down the state's current map.