Louisiana's 6th congressional district is a congressional district in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

. Located in south-central

, the district contains most of the state capital of Baton Rouge, the bulk of Baton Rouge's suburbs, and continues south to Houma. It also includes the western shores of

Lake Pontchartrain Lake Pontchartrain ( ) is an estuary located in southeastern Louisiana in the United States. It covers an area of with an average depth of . Some shipping channels are kept deeper through dredging. It is roughly oval in shape, about from wes ...

. The district is currently represented by

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

Garret Graves Garret Neal Graves (born January 31, 1972) is an American politician serving as the United States representative from Louisiana's 6th congressional district since 2015. Early life Garret Graves was born on January 31, 1972, to John and Cynthia ( ...

History

Since the 6th congressional district's creation, its boundaries have migrated from a position astraddle the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

to completely east of the Mississippi River and more recently astraddle the river again. For decades prior to 1974, the district was virtually coterminous with the

Florida Parishes The Florida Parishes ( es, Parroquias de Florida, french: Paroisses de Floride), on the east side of the Mississippi River—an area also known as the Northshore or Northlake region—are eight List of parishes in Louisiana, parishes in the southe ...

. In 1974, the 6th congressional district shed St. Tammany Parish to the 1st congressional district, and since then several redistrictings have incrementally moved the district's boundaries westward so that it has shed both

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

and

Tangipahoa The Tangipahoa were a Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe that lived just north of Lake Pontchartrain and between the Pearl River (Mississippi–Louisiana), Pearl River and the Mississippi River. Etymology The name Tangip ...

parishes (including Hammond, home of James H. Morrison, who represented the district for 24 years, the longest tenure of anyone ever to represent the district) to the 1st district. For most of its existence, the district's lines generally followed parish lines. In the 1990s redistricting, however, most of the district's black voters were transferred to the black-majority 4th district. Those lines, however, were thrown out in 1995 when the 4th was ruled to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, and from 1996 to 2013, the 6th included all of Baton Rouge. After the 2010 redistricting, a gash in western Baton Rouge, including most of the city's black precincts, was transferred to the

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

-based 2nd district.