HAPP y L ABOR DAy See photos from the Southern Decadence parade 1B
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M o n d ay, S e p t e M b e r 1, 2025
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Louisiana puts Voting Rights Act in crosshairs Supreme Court to mull race’s role in redistricting
BY ALYSE PFEIL | Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By CHRIS GRANGER
Johnny Davis III looks at the marquee sign in front of Martin Luther King High School in New Orleans on Aug. 4. Before it closed, it was the only public high school in that area.
‘They broke up a family’
Closure of Lower 9th Ward’s only high school causes adjustments BY MARIE FAZIO | Staff writer Until recently, Johnny Davis III’s commute to school took all of a few minutes. He’d walk down his street in the Lower 9th Ward past vacant lots and well-tended homes, cut through the shade at Oliver Bush Playground and arrive at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter High School. But Johnny, 16, made that short trek for the final time this May. The Orleans Parish School Board decided last year to close the “D”-rated school due to its low test scores and dwindling enrollment, leaving the recently built campus empty this fall. The Lower 9th Ward, which never fully recovered from the devastation that Hurricane Katrina wrought 20 years ago, once again lacks a high school — just as it did for many years after the storm.
ä See VOTING, page 7A
Johnny Davis III walks the path through his Lower 9th Ward neighborhood that he used to take to the now-closed Martin Luther ä See SCHOOL, page 4A King High School in New Orleans on Aug. 4.
Louisiana’s new women’s prison opens 2016 flood displaced inmates to temporary housing
BY HALEY MILLER | Staff writer Louisiana’s only women’s prison formally opened Thursday, after nine years of temporary housing arrangements for over 1,000 female inmates who were displaced by a devastating 2016 flood. The brand-new, $160 million Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, bordered by sugar cane fields and the nearby Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, is designed to withstand a 500-year flood like the historic inundation in August 2016, according to Louisiana Department
ä See PRISON, page 4A
WEATHER HIGH 89 LOW 76 PAGE 6B
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case that could fundamentally change the role that race plays in elections across the country — and Louisiana is at the center of it. Callais v. Louisiana is, on the surface, about whether Louisiana must have a congressional map with two majority-Black districts. But the nation’s high court could issue a ruling overturning decades of precedent that has governed how race can be used in redistricting. At issue is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, landmark civil rights legislation that for years has driven lawsuits and court orders requiring states like Louisiana to draw majority-minority voting districts. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a federal law passed by Congress to guarantee Black people access to the ballot and prevent voting discrimination. In its original form, the legislation outlawed race-based voting tests, helped eliminate poll taxes, allowed the federal government to oversee voting in states where discrimination was happening and required states with discriminatory voting practices to get federal approval before making changes to voting laws. The stated aim of the law was to enforce the 15th Amendment, which had been approved nearly 100 years earlier and says, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Gov. Jeff Landry and Warden Kristen Thomas, center, are joined by staff, partners and lawmakers for the ribboncutting for the new Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women on Thursday. STAFF PHOTO By JAVIER GALLEGOS
New N.O. mayor will walk tightrope with state Candidates say they can collaborate, but will defend against interventions
BY SOPHIE KASAKOVE and JAMES FINN Staff writers
Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry has sent state troopers to tamp down on New Orleans crime, bused its homeless residents to a state shelter and shaken up its public boards. Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill has waged fights with the Crescent City on everything from immigration enforcement to school-zone cameras. And Republican lawmakers in recent years have approved bills advancing a conservative Landry agenda on issues like crime and reproductive health over local objections. Democratic New Orleans is squarely in the crosshairs of an increasingly dominant GOPled state government — a reality the city’s next mayor will face head on. In the Oct. 11 mayoral race, three major Democratic candidates are
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ä See MAYOR, page 5A
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