Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the May 16 primary elections for Louisiana’s six U.S. House seats Thursday, the day after the U.S. Supreme Court declared the state’s existing congressional map unconstitutional.

“Allowing elections to proceed under an unconstitutional map would undermine the integrity of our system and violate the rights of our voters,” Landry said in a written statement. “This executive order ensures we uphold the rule of law while giving the Legislature the time it needs to pass a fair and lawful congressional map.”

Absentee voting in the U.S. House races had already begun, and early voting was scheduled to start Saturday. But postponing the election allows Landry and the Louisiana Legislature to pass a new map that eliminates one or both of Louisiana’s two majority-Black congressional districts....

A Louisiana Senate committee advanced two bills Tuesday that seek to criminalize disruptive protests in and near churches, but free speech advocates believe they are unconstitutional.

A judiciary committee approved Senate Bill 35 by Sen. Bill Wheat, R-Ponchatoula, and Senate Bill 306 by Sen. Rick Edmonds, R-Central, sending them to the full Senate. The bills are among several filed in the wake of a Jan. 18 protest at a Minneapolis church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer is a pastor.

Edmonds, a church pastor who is running for the 5th Congressional District seat, and Wheat acknowledged they did not know of any similar incidents in Louisiana....

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear new arguments Wednesday over Louisiana’s congressional maps. State Republican leaders now want to get rid of a majority-Black district they created, and the Supreme Court’s ruling could have national implications.

Attorney General Liz Murrill questions key tenets of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark federal law that has been amended multiple times over the decades to prohibit racial discrimination in elections. Watching closely are Republicans in other states who have pushed to redraw their congressional districts to improve their odds of holding onto U.S. House seats – and their majority status – in next year’s midterm elections.

In Louisiana v. Callais, justices could set a standard for the degree to which race can be considered when drawing election maps....

A state judge has ordered LSU to allow its law professor Ken Levy to return to teaching duties. The university had removed Levy from the classroom pending an investigation into alleged criticism of Gov. Jeff Landry.

Levy, a tenured professor of constitutional and criminal law, sued the university earlier this week, saying it violated his First Amendment rights and its own policies regarding tenured faculty.

Judge Don Johnson of the 19th Judicial District granted Levy’s request for a temporary restraining order that would allow him to return to the classroom for at least the next week. Johnson set a hearing for an injunction on Feb. 10. Read the judge’s order below. ...

A federal district court judge in Kentucky has struck down President Joe Biden’s effort to protect transgender students and make other changes to Title IX, ruling the U.S. Department of Education violated teachers’ rights by requiring them to use transgender students’ names and pronouns.

The ruling issued Thursday, which applies nationwide, came as a major blow to the Biden administration in its final days and to LGBTQ+ advocates. It comes less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, when the rule was likely to face more scrutiny from a candidate who took aim at transgender people in a culture-war focused campaign.

The Biden administration rule was released last April and aimed to protect LGBTQ+ students in K-12 schools, colleges and universities. The rule also conferred protections for pregnant students. The update to Title IX, the federal law that forbids sex-based discrimination in education, was expanded to include gender identity and sexual orientation. ...