A federal lawsuit to force Georgia to redraw its U.S. House districts was filed in 2021, and it is still far from resolved. On June 8, the three judges handling the case asked both sides to submit new briefs. The case is Georgia State Conference of the NAACP v Georgia, n.d., 1:21cv-5338.
The U.S. Supreme Court had handed down its Alabama redistricting decision on June 8, 2023, and had ruled that the federal Voting Rights Act requires Alabama to change its districts to make it likely that African-Americans will be a majority of the voters in two districts, not just one. The new briefs in the Georgia case will explain whether the Alabama decision must be applied to Georgia.
The new Alabama districts will probably be passed by the Alabama legislature in the next few weeks. The job in Alabama isn’t that difficult, because in Alabama the lower court had already approved a plan for two Black-majority districts. But the Georgia case will take far longer to resolve. It is somewhat likely that any new Georgia districts (should Georgia lose the lawsuit) won’t be in place for many months. If the districts aren’t settled by January 2024, Georgia will probably need to give some petitioning relief to any independent or minor party candidates who petition in 2024. The petitioning period for district office in Georgia runs from mid-January to mid-July. In 2002, a U.S. District Court judge cut the number of signatures to approximately two-thirds of normal, because the petitioning period was shortened due to late redistricting. The same thing happened in Georgia in 1982, when the normal petitioning was cut down to only one-fourth of normal, but only in the two Atlanta districts.
