On January 28, U.S. District Court judge Steve C. Jones rejected a request from Georgia to dismiss the federal lawsuit challenging the state’s legislative districts. The state had argued that Voting Rights Act cases challenging legislative redistricting need a three-judge court, but the judge rejected that notion. Here is the ruling in Grant v Raffensperger, n.d., 1:22cv-122.

The redistricting lawsuits currently underway in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and North Carolina will have a big impact on ballot access in 2022 in those states, for independent candidates running for district office. Courts have ruled many times that when the normal petitioning time is shortened due to late redistricting, states must reduce the ballot access barriers for those district offices. The longer these lawsuits take to resolve the new districts, the more those precedents apply, because no petitioning can be carried out before the district boundaries are settled.

The Georgia cases will also have a big impact on minor party candidates as well. That is not true for the other three states mentioned above, because in those other three states, one petition can put all nominees on the ballot for all office. But in Georgia, the statewide party petition for minor parties does not cover district office. Georgia is the only state which has a minor party petition procedure (one that doesn’t need to name any particular candidates) yet that petition is only good for statewide office, not district office.

On the evening of January 28, the U.S. Supreme Court requested the plaintiffs in the Alabama U.S. House redistricting case to respond to the state’s brief by Wednesday, February 2. Merrill v Milligan, 21A375.

On January 28, Alabama asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the order of lower courts, that required the state to create a second African-American majority U.S. House district. Here is the state’s application. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link. In the U.S. Supreme Court, the case is called Merrill v Milligan, 21A375.