Georgia lawmakers are set to start redrawing the state’s political maps today to create a number of new majority-Black voting districts in conjunction with an Oct. 26 federal district court ruling.
But their efforts could eventually be undermined by a more-recent federal appeals court decision barring individual voters and other private parties — including groups like the NAACP and the ACLU — from suing the government over certain alleged Voting Rights Act violations, according to legal experts who recently spoke with Capital B Atlanta.
The special legislative session beginning today at the order of Gov. Brian Kemp comes on the heels of a Nov. 20 Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that found only the U.S. attorney general’s office can pursue claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which bans discrimination in redistricting and voting. But most — and the most consequential — legal challenges to alleged Voting Rights Act violations, including cases involving the state of Georgia, are filed by private individuals and groups, not the Justice Department.
Today’s special legislative session is a key example.
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and the Sixth District African Methodist Episcopal Church were among the private parties who filed three Voting Rights Act lawsuits against Georgia officials nearly two years ago after the GOP-led legislature finalized political maps in December 2021 that the plaintiffs successfully argued diluted the electoral power of Black voters.
The trio of lawsuits led to a combined Oct. 26 U.S. Northern District of Georgia Court ruling ordering the state to redraw its political maps by Dec. 8.
Right now, the Eighth Circuit Court’s decision — in a suit filed by the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and a social justice nonprofit called the Arkansas Public Policy Panel — applies only to the Eighth Circuit states of Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
But legal experts expect the ruling will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could effectively make it the law of the land. The court’s six-member conservative majority struck down affirmative action in college admissions earlier this year and eliminated federal abortion rights protections last year that were included in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
A Supreme Court ban against private plaintiffs suing over Voting Rights Act violations would deal a devastating blow to protections included in the landmark law, according to Rahul Garabadu, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Georgia who represented the plaintiffs in one of the state redistricting cases decided in late October. It would mean groups like the ones that forced Georgia’s redistricting would have no standing to even bring such a case, and it could give future presidential administrations to control whether any cases are brought at all based on political calculations.
“It would upend voting rights cases as we know it,” Garabadu told Capital B Atlanta over the phone on Monday. He and other legal experts said they strongly disagree with federal judges’ legal rationale in the Eighth Circuit Court’s ruling and don’t expect the Supreme Court will side with those judges.
Such a ruling would undo decades of legal precedent, according to Emory University School of Law professor Alicia Hughes, who noted that groups like the NAACP and the ACLU have been protecting the civil rights of U.S. citizens for more than a century.
“You’re taking away the rights of citizens that are guaranteed by the United States Constitution,” she said. “It’s ridiculous.”
The Supreme Court has had a mixed record on Voting Rights Act cases over the past decade. In 2013, it nullified a key provision of the law that required Southern states to check in with the federal government before making changes to their own voting laws.
Earlier this year, the court ruled in favor of plaintiffs who filed a Voting Rights Act case against the state of Alabama that determined the Republican-led state Legislature had illegally diluted Black voters’ ability to choose their elected leaders and have their policy views represented as it relates to congressional maps.
Hughes also pointed out Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the Supreme Court’s liberal justices in their 5-4 decision on the Alabama Voting Rights Act case, Allen v. Milligan, earlier this year.
That decision, she noted, was partly based on the ratio of Black citizens and majority-Black voting districts in Alabama. She pointed out Georgia’s Black population (33.1%) is even greater than Alabama’s (26.8%).
How will redistricting affect Black voters?
State lawmakers have nine days to redraw Georgia’s political maps to include five new majority-Black state House districts, two additional majority-Black state Senate districts, and another majority-Black U.S. congressional district in west-metro Atlanta.
The likely outcome of these changes will be more Black lawmakers winning elections in Georgia beginning next year and an increased ability for them to influence policy at the state level, according to University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock III.
Black voters overwhelmingly favor Democrats in elections, Bullock noted, even though recent polls show declining Black support for President Joe Biden. Bullock said more majority-Black districts will likely reduce GOP majorities by five in the state House and two in the state Senate.
Right now, there are 33 Republicans and 23 Democrats in the state Senate, not including the lieutenant governor. The state House has 78 Democrats and 102 Republicans.
“I expect we’re going to see a map that’s going to be very favorable to Democrats,” Bullock said. “Some of the goals that Black citizens might like to have are probably going to be that much more likely to be enacted.”
‘Sweeping change’?
Backing the Eighth Circuit’s decision would be a “sweeping change” that affects the court’s most recent rulings in Voting Rights Act lawsuits that also were filed by private plaintiffs, according to Garabadu, whose clients still have to contend with an appeal of the Oct. 26 federal district court ruling in Georgia.
“We’re still optimistic that we’ll prevail on this argument here in the Eleventh Circuit and that this [Eighth Circuit] ruling won’t be expanded out to the rest of the country,” he said.
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