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 those cities,” James told Capital B Atlanta on Wednesday. “They deliberately reduced my strongest base and the people who have entrusted me over the years with this position as their senator.”
Black voters tend to support Democrats in most elections. James and others suggested Republicans’ goal is to make it harder for Democrats in the already-existing districts to win reelection, which may ultimately undermine the Black vote despite the creation of new majority-Black districts.
State Sen. Gail Davenport, a Democrat whose 44th District includes Jonesboro, took her Republican colleagues to task Wednesday morning over the proposed map, which she said “chops up” her district along with James’ 35th, state Sen. Valencia Seay’s District 34, and state Sen. Emmanuel Jones’ District 10, among others.
State Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler is expected to unveil Democrats’ proposed new Senate district map on Thursday before a final map is enacted.
Davenport said she and her fellow Democrats want to ensure the Black vote is not diluted when new district maps are finalized.
“Those of us who are Black here know why we were sent here, know that much blood was shed for our right to vote and for Black people to be represented,” Davenport said on the floor of the state Senate chamber Wednesday morning. “We need to stop playing with these numbers, keep these numbers intact, and stop diluting the Black vote.”
James and other voting rights advocates continued to criticize the proposed Republican state Senate map Wednesday afternoon during the legislative chamber’s Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee meeting. The ACLU of Georgia sent a letter to the committee on Tuesday raising concerns that the proposed map doesn’t comply with Jones’ order.
Rahul Garabadu is the ACLU attorney who served as a lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to Jones’ Oct. 26 ruling. At the committee hearing on Wednesday, Garabadu acknowledged the GOP’s map does include two new majority-Black state Senate districts, but he also said it “ignores” a 10-district area where the Black population has grown notably over the past several years.
“The vast majority of Black voters who are newly placed in Black majority districts are from outside the 10-district area that the court identified in its order,” Garabadu said during the hearing. “Furthermore, there are specific districts within the 10-district area that the court found unlawful, like Senate District 16, that remain virtually unchanged and leave some of our clients still in a district where they cannot elect candidates of choice.”
Republican state Sen. Bo Hatchett, who serves as vice chairman of the legislative chamber’s Reapportionment and Redistricting committee, declined to weigh in on the criticism levied by his Black Democratic colleagues about the proposed maps.
“I’ll just say that it is good to hear these comments,” Hatchett told Capital B Atlanta after the hearing. “I’m encouraged by the number of people that came out, and look forward to continuing this discussion as I move throughout the week.”
James said she expects Jones will reject the GOP map if it’s ultimately enacted.
A panel of federal judges in Alabama ended up overseeing the redrawing of a congressional district map there when state Republican lawmakers failed to draw a map that complied with the judges’ order following a lawsuit.
The U.S. Supreme Court supported the lower court’s ruling in that case.
