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February 9, 1936 — February 10, 2022
Ella Mae Gros, 86, a resident of Amelia, LA, passed away on Thursday, February 10, 2022 at Thibodaux Regional Medical Center.
Ella Mae was born on February 9, 1936 to Carrie Borne and Claiborne Gros of Labadieville, LA.
Ella Mae was a loving, caring, generous, and selfless person. She was full of life and her witty, fun-loving personality stole the hearts of anyone who came to know her.
She was known as “Grandma” to anyone that had the privilege of knowing her. She enjoyed cooking and spent many years serving her famous gumbo at Chez Marceaux. She had a love for gardening, in particular, she loved roses and never lost a bush. She also enjoyed NFL games, cards, and having a house full of family and friends. Her family was her life and she will be forever missed.
Ella Mae is survived by her husband of seventy years, Jean Gros Sr.; her children, Agnes Gros Gaudet and her husband, EJ, Lorena Gros Broussard, Jean Gros Jr. and his wife Dorothy, Molly Gros Crews and her husband, Paul; her grandchildren, Chad Gaudet, Curtis Gaudet, Blaine Gaudet, Cheri Gaudet Martin, Sue Ellen Broussard, James “Jimmy” Broussard Jr., Lisa Broussard, Carey Gros Gaddis, Jean “Bubba” Gros III, Nicholas Gros, Jonathan Gros, Tito Espinal, Tammy Marceaux Manley, Tiffany Marceaux Kelly, Janeen Marceaux Landry, Carissa Marceaux Theriot, Tenille Gaudet, Jessica Crews, Justin Crews, and Jason Crews. She will be missed by her 48 great-grandchildren and 22 great-great-grandchildren and was looking forward to meeting three more great-great-grandchildren on the way.
Ella Mae is preceded in death by her parents, Carrie and Claiborne Gros; her in-laws, Emma Acosta and Lazime Gros; her children, Michael Gros, Peggy Gros Marceaux and her husband Harley; one son-in-law, James “Jimmy” Broussard Sr.; her grandchildren, Ethan and Evan Crews; her sisters, Lilly Mae Bailey, Irene “Toot” Acosta, Lillian Breaux, Vivian Gros, and her brothers Edward “Mann” Gros, Clarence Gros, and Joseph Gros.
Those honored to serve as pallbearers will be Brennan Manley, Jean Gros III, Nicholas Gros, Jonathan Gros, James Broussard Jr., Justin Crews, Curtis Gaudet, Chad Gaudet, Blaine Gaudet and Jason Crews.
Her immediate family will have a private moment with their mother and grandmother at Twin City Funeral Home in Morgan City, LA on Wednesday, February 16, 2022 from 8:00 a.m.-9:00 a.m. and will welcome family and friends from 9:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. The family invites you to join them in Praying of the Rosary at 10:00 a.m. A mass of Christian Burial will be held immediately following at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Amelia, LA. Ella Mae will be laid to rest at St. Andrew Cemetery in Amelia, LA.

Randolph “Randy” Joseph Chaisson Jr., 77, a resident of Morgan City, passed away peacefully Sunday, February 13, 2022 at The Sanctuary at Passages Hospice in New Orleans.
Randy married Rebecca Ann Giblin from Fort Worth, TX, May 31, 1975 and they had three daughters. He was a member of Morgan City Kingdom Hall of Jehovah Witnesses. Randy was the owner of Chaisson’s Painting and Home Repair for many years. He enjoyed spending time with family and friends. You would often find him outdoors birdwatching and fishing.
He will be sadly missed and lovingly remembered by his three daughters, Beth Allison Rowland and husband Solomon, April Chaisson, Erin Harrison and husband Leland; four grandchildren, Taylor Chaisson, Jacob Rhodes, Dakota Sauce, and Noah Harrison; one great-grandchild; one sister, Brenda Billiot.
Randy was preceded in death by his parents, Randolph Joseph Chaisson Sr. and Marie Eve Keller Chaisson; two brothers, Rodney Boudreaux and Noel Boudreaux.
A memorial visitation will be held Friday, February 18, 2022 at Twin City Funeral Home from 4:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m.

BATON ROUGE—Two weeks of debate, public testimony and pleas from activists for greater minority representation culminated in a 40-minute Senate floor meeting Monday that advanced two Republican bills mostly maintaining the status quo of the state Senate and Supreme Court district maps.

State representatives then voted 82-21 Monday evening to leave the state House with the same number of minority-majority districts, 29 of 105, that it has now. All of the vote margins in both chambers were large enough to override gubernatorial vetoes if they hold going forward.

“It took a while to get to where we are right now,” Senate President Page Cortez, R- Lafayette, said. “I’m glad that the hawks and the doves kept to themselves today.”

Senate Bill 1, authored by Cortez, kept the state Senate map largely intact with only 11 of the 39 seats representing majority-Black districts.

Sen. Gary Carter, D-New Orleans, pleaded for one final chance to increase minority representation. He said he had spent the weekend meeting with elected and unelected constituents concerning district lines.

“These aren’t just lines on a page,” Carter said. “These are people we represent, who we love, who we fight for, who invite us into their homes.”

Carter proposed an amendment to protect the minority nature of minority-majority state Senate Districts 5 and 7 by increasing the number of African American voters in them.

Sen. Patrick Connick, R-Marrero, contested the amendment. He and 27 other senators voted to reject it.

Senators voted 27-12 to advance both the state Senate redistricting bill and SB15, the state Supreme Court redistricting bill, to the House.

Senate Bill 15, authored by Sen. Sharon Hewitt, R-Slidell, also leaves the 25-year-old Supreme Court district map mostly the same, retaining only one majority-minority district.

“The Supreme Court is severely malapportioned,” Hewitt said. “The map looks very familiar in terms of how it represents the continuity of representation.”

Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, offered two amendments to Hewitt’s bill that would have increased the number of majority-minority districts.

He proposed that District 5 and District 7 should be majority-minority districts. His lines showed that Black voters would make up over 53-57% of both districts while maintaining an equal number of voters in each district.

Hewitt contested the amendment.

“I do believe that the bill that I have proposed does a better job of adhering to our redistricting principles, in particular, to maintain the core of prior districts, especially in the northern part of the state,” Hewitt said.

The Senate bills for both its own redistricting and that of the Supreme Court exceeded the 26 votes that would be needed to override a veto if Gov. John Bel Edwards rejected either of the proposed maps.

In contrast to Hewitt’s bill, Rep. Barry Ivey, R-Baton Rouge, received bipartisan support Monday for his House Bill 22 that provides for a second majority-Black Supreme Court district.

Ivey’s proposed second minority-majority district would be 56.6% Black and encompass parishes along the Arkansas border, move down the Mississippi River and end in East Baton Rouge Parish.

Ivey explained to the House and Governmental Affairs committee how his bill is stronger than others in its compactness, competitiveness and minority representation.

Two Republicans on the committee, Rep. Tanner Magee of Houma, and Rep. Mike Johnson of Pineville, voted with Democrats to advance Ivey’s bill to the House floor.

House members also took to the House floor Monday to debate House Bill 14, which would redraw the maps of many of the 105 state House seats.

Rep. Cedric Glover, D-Shreveport, presented an amendment that would have added an additional majority-minority district in Shreveport, increasing the majority-minority districts in the bill to 30 from 29.

“It is the right thing to do,” said Glover.

Glover argued that his amendment was not only fair but that it is in line with federal law.
That amendment and two others by Glover failed in largely party-line votes.

Margaret DeLaney contributed to this story.

BATON ROUGE – As it became clear that Republican leaders planned to pass redistricting maps that would not expand minority seats in Congress or the Louisiana Legislature, Black lawmakers said they had two fallbacks – possible vetoes by Gov. John Bel Edwards and lawsuits.

Now both of those options seem a bit shakier.

The Louisiana House and Senate both passed congressional redistricting plans last week by vote margins that would be big enough to override vetoes by Edwards, a Democrat, if the Republicans could muster those votes again.

And last Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court delayed hearing a suit in a similar redistricting fight in Alabama in a move that legal experts say could hint at less court intervention to support minority claims in the future.

In a 5-4 vote, the court’s conservative majority let a redistricting plan passed by the Alabama Legislature stand through this fall’s midterm elections even though an appeals court had ruled that the law may have violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in failing to provide for a second minority-majority congressional district.

The Supreme Court, which has trimmed back parts of the voting-rights law in recent years, said it would consider the merits of the Alabama case later. But that is not likely to happen until after the November elections, which will decide the balance of power in Congress.

Republicans and Democrats have been fighting across the country to hold or gain congressional seats through the redistricting process. So if lawsuits challenging the decisions are delayed in many states, that could leave the party with the most power–Republicans in red states like Louisiana and Alabama and Democrats in blue states–in the driver’s seat in those areas.

Peter Robins-Brown, the executive director for Louisiana Progress, an advocacy group, said the Supreme Court decision to let the GOP’s Alabama redistricting map stand for now is likely in Louisiana to “embolden those who were already planning to submit a map that would end up in court and make folks who were planning to challenge those maps feel a little worse.”

Others on the Democratic side remain hopeful that the setback will be temporary. “The Supreme Court has not made any real legal conclusions on this at this point,” Rep. Royce Duplessis, D-New Orleans said. “So I don't think the door is closed.”

Louisiana is unique for a state in the Deep South, having both a Republican-controlled legislature and a Democratic governor.

While Edwards has not explicitly stated which maps he would or would not veto, he has said that he thinks that it would be fair for two of the state’s six congressional districts to be majority Black. He later pulled back slightly, saying that minority voters had to at least be capable of influencing elections in the second of those two districts.

Black leaders believe that, with African Americans making up about 33% of Louisiana's population, they should have a good chance to elect two of the state’s six congressmen. The current maps only provide for one Black-majority district, and that would remain the case under the GOP bills.

Black lawmakers also are seeking more seats in the state Senate and House, while the Republican bills also would keep those totals the same as there are now.

State Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, said he had already asked Edwards to veto the Republican bills.

“I would hope that the governor vetoes it, even if it's overridden,” Fields said, “because I just think it's the right thing to do, and it’s the right place for him in history. It is wrong. Just because you have the power to pass it doesn't mean that you should, and I think the majority is passing a plan that's wrong.”

A successful veto would force Republican leaders to negotiate further. But if lawmakers override a veto, Fields said, Black lawmakers and civil rights groups will continue to fight in court.

“The only way the minority can get some relief is through the courts and it's always been that way. I was hoping that day would change but it's not gonna change without the assistance of the court.”

Last week, the state Senate voted 27-12 to advance a plan that would leave Louisiana with just one majority-Black congressional district. The House passed a similar measure by a 70-33 margin.

That was one more vote than needed for the GOP plan in the Senate, and the exact number needed in the House, to reach the two-thirds vote threshold in both chambers required to override a veto.

The votes could still be fluid, though. In the House, two Democrats, Rep. Francis Thompson of Delhi and Rep. C. Travis Johnson of Vidalia, crossed over to support the Republican congressional plan, and two independents voted with the Republicans.

Two Republicans, Rep. Blake Miguez, R-Erath, and Rep. Beryl Amedee, R-Gray, voted against the bill out of concern that it would split St. Martin Parish into two congressional districts, though they could return to the fold if that issue is resolved.

Duplessis said in an interview that he thought he could persuade one of the lawmakers who voted with the Republicans to vote with the Democrats on a vote to override a veto.

Last summer, Republicans passed a bill to prevent transgender girls from competing in school sports, with 78 yes votes in the House and 29 in the Senate. But after Edwards negotiated with some of the lawmakers, efforts to override his veto failed, with Republicans losing 10 of the votes in the House and two in the Senate.

“Last year, that anti-trans bill got 78 votes when it passed, and then the governor and his folks were able to bring that down to a non-veto override,” said Robins-Brown of Louisiana Progress.

“So as I've been talking to people to get their personal take on what the odds are of a veto override” after the House vote on the congressional maps Friday night, he said, “I’ve found that people are more encouraged after that vote that he will veto it and it will be hard to override the veto.”

“I would say at this point I think that it's very likely that he vetoes a congressional map, and
personally, I would put it about a coin flip, like really 50/50 whether that veto gets overridden or not,” Robins-Brown added.

Sen. Sharon Hewitt, R-Slidell, and Rep. John Stefanski, the chairpeople of the Senate and House committees leading the redistricting effort, both said last week that if the Legislature created two majority-Black districts, the population of each would be only 51% to 53% minority. They said white candidates could possibly win both districts if enough Black voters did not turn out to vote.

State election statistics show that in recent major elections, the percentage of registered white voters who went to the polls was higher than the percentage of registered Black voters.

When Edwards won re-election in a runoff in 2019, 52.8% of registered white residents voted, compared to 50.2% of registered Black voters. In the 2020 presidential election, the contrast was starker, with 74.5% of registered white citizens voting versus only 63.1% of Black voters.

Black leaders said, however, that if Black voters felt their candidates had a better chance to win, they would turn out in greater numbers.

The Alabama case was the first to reach the Supreme Court during the current redistricting cycle.

African Americans make up 27 percent of Alabama’s population, but only one of the state’s seven congressional districts is majority-minority. That district is packed with 63 percent Black voters. Democrats were suing for this district to be split in two so that Black voters would have a greater chance of electing a second minority congressman.

The three-judge appeals court panel, which included two appointees of President Trump, found that the maps diluted Black votes and were in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

In the 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court wrote that the lower court’s requirement for Alabama to draw a new map comes too close to the 2020 primary election primary and could confuse voters.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, in a concurring opinion, wrote that “the stay order does not make or signal any change to voting rights law.”

But several national legal experts have said that since 2013, the Supreme Court has been whittling away at the Voting Rights Act, and that a majority of the justices may not be as sympathetic to minorities on voting rights as some previous justices have been.

Dave Wasserman, a congressional analyst for the non-partisan Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C., said Connecticut just became the latest state to adopt a new congressional map based on population changes in the 2020 Census.

New boundaries have been adopted for 322 House districts in these states. Under the new lines, President Joe Biden would have carried 182 of the districts based on the vote totals in those areas in 2020, Wasserman tweeted recently. That would mark an increase of six districts leaning Democratic.

Most of the 11 states still working redistricting tilt Republican, Wasserman said, with Biden carrying only 48 of the 113 seats in 2020.

Salena Ali also contributed to this story.