Democratic Georgia lawmakers and voting rights advocates pushed back Wednesday on a new state Senate district map that they say dilutes the electoral power of Black voters and violates a federal judge’s order in the process.

“What they’re doing is really criminal,” state Sen. Donzella James, a Democrat from Atlanta, said to Capital B Atlanta about her Republican colleagues inside the Capitol on Wednesday.

U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones determined on Oct. 26 that Georgia’s current political maps, which Republicans finalized in December 2021, mitigate the Black vote in certain parts of the state in violation of Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which bans discrimination in redistricting and voting.

Jones gave state legislators a Dec. 8 deadline to design a new set of maps that create five new majority-Black state House districts, two additional majority-Black state Senate districts, and another majority-Black congressional district in west-metro Atlanta.

GOP Gov. Brian Kemp convened a special legislative session, which began on Wednesday, to comply with Jones’ order. Republicans have majority control of both legislative chambers in the Gold Dome.

On Monday, GOP senators unveiled a proposed district map that does include the two mostly-Black districts required by Jones, but critics contend Republican senators also redrew preexisting districts in a way that undermines the Black vote in those areas.

Those critics include James, who currently serves west Atlanta’s majority-Black District 35. She says the GOP’s proposed new map would move her to a newly created District 28 that has a smaller majority-Black population. James said Black folks make up 79% of voters in her current district — which covers parts of Fulton County and Douglas County, including East Point and College Park — but just 51% in the one Republicans released on Monday.

“I no longer have Union City, Fairmount, Palmetto, or any of…