Federal judge orders new congressional and state legislative maps in Georgia

A federal judge on Thursday ordered Georgia to draw new congressional and state legislative maps, ruling that state legislators improperly diluted the political power of Black voters in establishing those boundaries following the 2020 census.

The ruling by US District Judge Steve Jones could result in Democrats securing an additional seat in the US House from Georgia. Republicans currently hold nine slots in the state’s 14-member congressional delegation.

The Peach State litigation is among several legal and political fights underway in nearly a dozen states that could determine whether the GOP retains its narrow majority in the US House after next year’s elections.

In his ruling, Jones said Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature had violated the Voting Rights Act, the nation’s landmark civil rights law, in establishing district lines.

“The Court commends Georgia for the great strides that it has made to increase the political opportunities of Black voters in the 58 years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” Jones wrote. “Despite these great gains, the Court determines that in certain areas of the State, the political process is not equally open to Black voters.”

He noted that minorities accounted for “all” of the state’s population growth in the past decade but said that “the number of majority-Black congressional and legislative districts remained the same.”

Jones, who set a December 8 deadline for state lawmakers to craft new maps, ordered the legislature to draw an additional majority-Black congressional district in the western part of the Atlanta metro area, along with creating two more state Senate districts and five additional state House districts with Black majorities.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday called a November 29 special session for lawmakers to work on new maps…