The last-ditch bill proposing two majority Black districts for Louisiana’s six seats in Congress was pulled Saturday from the state Senate, leading lawmakers to adjourn a special session early without producing the new map a federal judge had ordered earlier this month.

Sen. Rick Ward, R-Port Allen, brought forward a bill Friday that retained a Black majority in the 2nd Congressional District and altered the 6th District to give Black voters a slight advantage in numbers. It also dramatically reconfigured the other four districts, although they stayed majority white.

Ward’s bill came up for Senate floor debate Saturday. After senators asked for several changes to meet their local preferences, Ward decided not to seek a vote on the amendments or the bill itself.

“We can’t get anything collectively that will get us to 20 votes,” the amount needed for approval, Ward told the Senate before pulling his bill.

A group of Black voters sued in federal court to block the implementation of the congressional map the  Legislature approved in its February redistricting session. It contains just one majority Black district of out six, although Louisiana’s Black population is close to 33% according to the 2020 Census.

Gov. John Bel Edwards called a second redistricting session, which convened Wednesday, to meet that date. Lawmakers couldn’t come together any sooner because state law requires seven days notice before the start of a special session, and Dick’s stay was issued

The Legislature’s Republican leadership insisted the judge hadn’t given them enough time to fashion a new bill, an argument Dick rejected when Senate President Page Cortez and House Speaker Clay Schexnayder presented it in her court Thursday seeking a deadline extension.

“We’ve hit the end of the road,” Cortez said Saturday after Ward’s shelved his bill.

Louisiana’s top election official, Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican, is the lead defendant in the federal lawsuit, joined by Cortez, Schexnayder and Attorney General Jeff Landry, also a GOP member. They have challenged Dick’s ruling in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeal but were unable to get judges there to lengthen a temporary stay that would have prevented a second redistricting session.

“Clearly, there were different people from every corner of the state wanting different goals … and then there were very few shared goals,” the Senate president said.

Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, offered a map with two majority Black districts that failed to advance from committee. He also offered an amendment to Ward’s bill that would have turned it into the map he submitted, but none of the changes were put up for a vote.

Republicans in the Legislature did not make a sincere effort to add another majority Black district, said Fields, who was the fourth Black person to hold a congressional seat in Louisiana out of 173 people elected to represent the state in the U.S. House.

“They elect more white members to Congress in one year than we have elected in a lifetime,” Fields said, “and to have such high resistance against developing a second majority-minority district is just unbelievable.”

Gov. John Bel Edwards chose to veto the congressional map approved in February only to have the GOP-dominated Legislature override it. In a statement Saturday, the governor repeated his frequent point that “simple math and simple fairness” requires lawmakers to add a second Black district.

“The irony of all ironies is that for the first time yesterday, Louisiana recognized Juneteenth as an official state holiday. And today, on the actual holiday, which celebrates the day when enslaved Americans learned of their freedom, it is clear that our African-American brothers and sisters are still fighting for fair representation. Louisiana, we can and should do better than this.”