Louisiana veto session ends with no bill rejections reversed

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana lawmakers ended their historic veto session Wednesday after two days in which Republicans failed to overturn any of Gov. John Bel Edwards' bill rejections, a significant blow to GOP efforts to assert independence from the Democratic governor.

The session collapsed after House Republicans couldn't garner the votes to reverse Edwards' veto of legislation banning transgender girls from school sports teams, the driving force behind the first veto session ever held under the nearly 50-year-old state constitution.

“It appears that we have concluded the business of the veto session,” Republican Senate President Page Cortez said two hours after the House's failed override vote.

While the Senate narrowly agreed Tuesday to the veto override of the sports ban, the House on Wednesday fell two votes short of the two-thirds support required to bypass the governor. Republicans were unable to sway the handful of Democrats needed to reach the supermajority hurdle to mark what would have been the first time in nearly 30 years that the Louisiana Legislature has overridden a gubernatorial veto.

Republican-led efforts to reverse Edwards’ spurning of a bill to loosen the rules for carrying concealed handguns in Louisiana stalled in the Senate, with three votes fewer than required. Other veto overrides in the Senate failed as well, and the House didn't try to overturn anything beyond the sports ban measure.

“At the end of the day, the Legislature got it right and I’m immensely thankful for that," Edwards, the Deep South’s only Democratic governor, said at a celebratory news conference after adjournment.

Still, Republican leader Rep. Blake Miguez said the GOP “made strides” toward greater legislative independence simply by breaking decades of tradition and...