Georgia Rep. Mack Jackson, D-Sandersville, looks at a map of proposed state House districts before a House hearing, Nov. 29, 2023, at the state Capitol in Atlanta.
Jeff Amy | AP
A federal judge on Wednesday upheld new Georgia congressional and legislative voting districts that protected Republican partisan advantages, saying the creation of new majority-Black voting districts set up illegal minority vote dilution that led him to order the maps to be redrawn.
United States District Judge Steve Jones, in three separate but similar orders, rejected claims that the new maps did not do enough to help Black voters. Jones said he can’t interfere with legislative options, even as Republicans move to protect their power. The maps were redrawn during a recent special session of the legislature after Jones ruled in October that an earlier set of maps illegally disadvantaged Black voters.
The approval of the maps sets the stage for them to be used in the upcoming elections in 2024. They are likely to maintain the same 9-5 Republican majority in Georgia’s 14 congressional seats, while also maintaining majorities of the GOP in the state Senate and House.
The maps added Black-majority districts that Jones placed the order in October, including one in Congress, two in the state Senate and five in the state House. But they would radically reconfigure some Democratic-held districts without Black majorities, including Democratic US Rep. 7th District. Lucy McBath in the suburbs of Atlanta.
McBath promised to stay in the House. “I will not let the Republicans decide if my time in Congress is up,” he wrote in a fundraising email Thursday. But that means he will likely have to seek to run in a new district for a second straight election, after Republicans kicked him out of the district he originally won.
