Higgins is the representative for Louisiana’s 3rd congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 3, 2017. Higgins is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 61 years old.
Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his senior government advisors, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided instead by incumbent politicians running in the very same election. Their attempts to suppress entire state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and using a disinformation campaign of lies and conspiracy theories was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.
Higgins was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, Higgins joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election, based on lies and a preposterous legal argument which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.) On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Higgins voted to reject the state-certified election results of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania (states narrowly won by Democrats), which could have changed the outcome of the election. These legislators have generally changed their story after their vote, claiming it was merely a protest and not intended to change the outcome of the election as they clearly sought prior to the vote. The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors.
![Photo of Rep. Clay Higgins [R-LA3]](/static/legislator-photos/412705-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Legislative Metrics
Read our 2022 Report Card for Higgins.
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Higgins is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the House of Representatives positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills Higgins has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Mar 24, 2023. See full analysis methodology.
Committee Membership
Clay Higgins sits on the following committees:
Enacted Legislation
Higgins was the primary sponsor of 2 bills that were enacted:
- H.R. 7158 (117th): Long-Term Care Veterans Choice Act
- H.R. 4761 (116th): DHS Opioid Detection Resilience Act of 2019
Does 2 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.
We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Higgins sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Crime and Law Enforcement (22%) Armed Forces and National Security (17%) Education (15%) Immigration (12%) Government Operations and Politics (10%) Energy (10%) Health (10%) Finance and Financial Sector (5%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Higgins recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.R. 1678: To limit the applicability of certain rules with regard to possession of a …
- H.R. 1545: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to exclude from gross income …
- H.R. 1057: Imported Seafood Safety Standards Act
- H.R. 336: Finish the Wall Act
- H.R. 9682 (117th): To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act make inadmissible past representatives or …
- H.R. 9683 (117th): To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to expand the definition of …
- H.R. 9492 (117th): International Megan’s Law Improvement Act of 2022
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2017 to Mar 2023, Higgins missed 246 of 3,326 roll call votes, which is 7.4%. This is much worse than the median of 1.5% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- Office of Clay Higgins for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
