A federal district court struck down the congressional and legislative maps that Georgia Republicans enacted after the 2020 census, ruling on Thursday that they illegally discriminated against Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
The court gave the Republican-led legislature until Dec. 8 to redraw one congressional district and seven legislative districts in order to empower Black voters, prompting GOP Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special legislative session beginning Nov. 29. However, like their counterparts in Alabama, Georgia Republicans may try to craft maps that still do not comply with the VRA and fight to preserve them on appeal, or at least drag out the process.
To remedy Georgia’s VRA violation, the court ordered the creation of a new majority-Black congressional district in Atlanta's western suburbs. During the court litigation, one set of plaintiffs put forth just such a map, which you can see alongside the GOP's gerrymander in the illustration at the top of this story. (Click here for a larger image, and see here for an interactive version). The plaintiffs’ map would dismantle the solidly red 6th District, which is currently represented by GOP Rep. Rich McCormick; in its place would be an entirely new 6th due west of Atlanta that would be just over 50% Black and heavily Democratic.
The court noted that, in the decade prior to the 2020 census, minorities accounted for all of state’s population growth, with Black Georgians responsible for almost half that total. The white population, by contrast, actually fell. Nonetheless, Republicans refused to increase the number of Black-majority districts at either the congressional or legislative levels.
The Atlanta metropolitan area in particular has seen explosive growth among Black, Latino, and Asian American residents. Despite the region’s skyrocketing diversity, the GOP's new congressional map failed to create a new district in the western Atlanta area where Black voters could elect their preferred candidate, who would almost certainly be a Black Democrat.
Instead, Republicans gerrymandered the 6th District to flip it from blue to red. The old 6th had been a majority-white but highly educated suburban district directly north of Atlanta that Rep. Lucy McBath, a Black Democrat, had flipped in 2018 and held in 2020. The previous district had backed Joe Biden 55-44 in 2020, but the GOP's new gerrymander radically reconfigured it into a seat that Donald Trump would have won 57-42.
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