A federal judge has ruled in a closely watched redistricting case out of Georgia, preserving a Republican gerrymander that dismantled the district represented by Rep. Lucy McBath (D).
McBath announced she would run in a new district after the decision. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that the maps will likely remain in place through at least Election Day 2024.
The approved maps, signed into law by Governor Brian Kemp (R) earlier this month, maintain Republicans’ 9-5 advantage in the state’s congressional representation. They aim to protect Republican members of Congress who may have faced a challenging reelection. The impact of years of efforts by the Supreme Court to carve away chunks of the Voting Rights Act is also evident in these maps.
Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath expressed her disappointment at the judge’s ruling but stated her plans to run in the newly drawn 6th District on metro Atlanta’s west side if they stand. “Too much is at stake to stand down.” #gapol https://t.co/D5JrnO2WH5 pic.twitter.com/i1skspAd1M
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) December 28, 2023
U.S. District Judge Steven Jones, who issued today’s ruling, had ordered the legislature to draw new maps earlier this year after finding that its 2021 redistricting diluted the strength of Black voters.
Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature created an obvious partisan gerrymander in response to his order, according to Jones. This was deemed not a racial gerrymander but an aggressive partisan gerrymander allowed by the Supreme Court.
“[T]he committee and floor debate transcripts make clear that the General Assembly
created the 2023 Remedial Congressional Plan in a manner that politically
protected the majority party (i.e., the Republican Party) as much as possible,” wrote Jones, an Obama appointee. “However, redistricting decisions by a legislative body with an eye toward securing partisan advantage does not alone violate Section 2,” he wrote, citing Rucho v. Common Cause, a recent Supreme Court ruling on Section 2.
According to Jones, “the Supreme Court has expressly stated that federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, given the lack of constitutional authority and the absence of legal standards to direct such decisions.”
The decision did not address the question of whether a district in which white voters are a minority but no group is a majority constitutes a protected, majority-minority district under the law. One such district was McBath’s, which was controlled by a minority coalition of Black, Latino and Asian voters.
Jones sidestepped that question, saying it was not a part of the dispute at hand.
“From its onset, however, this case has been about Black voters,” Jones’ wrote,
