BATON ROUGE - The fate of state legislative districts is in the hands of US District Court Judge Shelly Dick after the trial to change them ended last week.

Political analyst James Hartman says it "could be utter chaos" depending on her ruling.

While Dick has already determined that congressional maps in the state are unconstitutional and must be redrawn, that election is 11 months away. State legislative races just happened.

"If the court chooses to essentially invalidate the election results from October and November, that would absolutely create utter chaos for the state legislature if we had to do election over," Hartman said.

He says it could even lead to a constitutional crisis.

"The State Constitution defines the end of the current legislatures term as being in early January, so if there had to be new elections—and under state law I don't think they could be held until the spring, at the absolute earliest—we could essentially find ourselves functioning with only an executive and judicial branch for a while."

However, that outcome is not likely due to how recent the elections were and almost guaranteed appeals.

"That would be an absolute revolutionary, unprecedented maneuver if the courts did rule that way."

What will happen, Hartman says, if the judge decides the boundaries are illegal is a potential power shift.

"All things being equal, the outcome would almost certainly be a higher percentage of seats going to democrats, which would upend the super majority the republican caucus now holds. How cataclysmic that is is open to interpretation."

Then the question becomes what happens next.

"If the legislative boundaries have to be redrawn and there has to be a new election, who's going to redraw them? The legislators terms end in four weeks."

Judge Dick says she will have her ruling after the holidays.