On Oct. 26, a federal judge ruled that Georgia’s redrawn congressional maps violate the Voting Rights Act.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled that the Georgia General Assembly must redraw its congressional maps, as the current draft has been deemed racially discriminatory, according to AP News.
Jones, following his ruling, ordered Georgia’s General Assembly to redraw the maps to include one new Black-majority congressional district, two new state Senate districts with a Black-majority and five new Black-majority state House districts, according to Atlanta News First.
According to the same report, Jones has given the Republican-majority assembly until Dec. 8 to redraw the maps, saying that he would redraw them if they failed to do so.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has called for a special session to convene on Nov. 29 to redraw district maps. In a comment to NBC News, a spokesperson for Attorney General Chris Carr said that they are currently in the process of reading the ruling and looking at legal avenues available.
Georgia officials have not ruled out appealing the ruling, stating that Gov. Kemp’s calling for a special session was a scheduling act rather than an acceptance of the decision as final, according to AP News.
The voting maps that were contested and ultimately thrown out by Jones were contested by multiple groups upon its passage.
According to the AJC, groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center said that maps impacted communities of color and prevented them from having adequate representation.
“The maps produced out of the special legislative session block Georgia’s communities of color from obtaining political representation that reflects their population growth,” SPLC senior staff attorney Jack Genberg told the AJC.
These redistricted areas caused Rep. Lucy McBath to move and run in Georgia’s 7th district after Republicans had converted the 6th district into a majority-Republican district, as mentioned in The Sentinel’s 2022 midterm coverage.
The maps were passed within six days and were made public on Nov. 17, 2021, before officially passing on Nov. 22, 2021.
This ruling comes as similar rulings in Florida and Alabama declared that both states had violated the Voting Rights Act, and that maps must be redrawn to give more representation to Black voters in the states, according to the previously mentioned report from AP News. In that same report, it also mentions the ongoing legal challenges in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
The 2024 elections are almost a year out. If the Georgia maps are redrawn without a successful appeal, it would make the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives more uncertain, according to the Washington Post.