ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia special session to redraw congressional and legislative voting district maps is likely to end Thursday after a House committee on Wednesday advanced a Republican-favored congressional map that targets Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath’s current district.
However, the wrangling is unlikely to end there, with those who brought the challenges that overturned the current maps likely to argue in court that Georgia’s Republican-controlled General Assembly has violated the federal court order that directed them to produce new maps.
The House Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee, with little debate, voted 9-4 on Wednesday to send the congressional map to the full House for a vote. The plan, which passed the state Senate 33-22 on Tuesday, seeks a wholesale reconfiguration of a suburban Atlanta district now represented by McBath.
Lawmakers were called into special session after U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled in October that Georgia’s congressional, state Senate and state House maps violate federal law by diluting Black voting power. Jones mandated Black majorities in one additional congressional district, two additional state Senate districts and five additional state House districts. Jones instructed lawmakers to create the new congressional district on metro Atlanta’s western side.
Republicans have already given final passage to a new state Senate map likely to retain Republicans’ current 33-23 majority in that chamber, and a new House map that could cut the GOP majority there by one or two seats from the current 102-78 margin.
Republicans say the plans meet Jones’ requirements to draw more majority-Black districts.
“Well, I’m optimistic or cautiously optimistic that we’ve done what the judge wants because we’ve complied with the text of his order,” House Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee Chairman Rob Leverett, an Elberton Republican, told reporters after the meeting.
The committee rejected a
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