ATLANTA (AP) — A push by Georgia Republicans to maintain their congressional majority is likely to come down to a decades-old legal question that has never been settled by the U.S. Supreme Court — does federal law protect voting districts where a coalition of nonwhite voters hold sway?
The question was a key part of debate Monday as a Senate committee voted 7-4 along party lines to advance the proposed congressional map. It could be debated Tuesday before the full state Senate.
Republicans pushing redistricting plans in Georgia say such districts aren’t protected by the federal Voting Rights Act. Thus, they say it’s legal for them to target a district now represented by Democratic U.S. Rep Lucy McBath for a drastic transformation, even as they draw a new Black-majority district elsewhere in metro Atlanta. Such a 1-for-1 switch in districts likely to elect a Democrat would mean Republicans are likely to maintain their 9-5 edge in Georgia’s congressional delegation. That’s despite nearly half of voters casting ballots for Democrats in recent statewide elections.
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.
Jones wrote in his order that Georgia can’t fix its problems “by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere.” Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee Chairwoman Shelly Echols, a Gainesville Republican, has said repeatedly that Republicans are interpreting minority opportunity to mean majority-Black.
“A minority opportunity district must be a district where a single racial group is a majority,” Echols said…
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