A federal appeals court ruled in favor of Georgia Republicans on Tuesday, saying that a GOP-backed congressional map deserved a reevaluation following the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision.
The appeals court’s Tuesday ruling asked Northern District of Georgia Judge Steve Jones to reconsider his October 2023 ruling, in which he ordered the state to redraw its 2021 congressional map to include a second black-majority district. Jones said that the Republican congressional map diluted minority voting power.
As a result of Jones’s October 2023 ruling, the state legislature redrew its maps to include a second black-majority district, while also drawing boundaries that kept the delegation’s balance of nine Republican seats to four Democratic seats.
The 2023-redrawn map was approved by Jones and put into play for the 2024 and 2026 elections, while the appeal of Jones’s October 2023 decision sat pending. The appeals court’s ruling will not affect the state’s 2026 congressional map, as the Peach State’s primaries were held in May, but it could affect the map used in the 2028 elections.
The appeals court based its Tuesday ruling on the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, in which the court struck down race-based redistricting in Louisiana and began a snowball effect of redistricting moves in many southern states. The Supreme Court majority said the race-based redistricting method violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
“The Supreme Court issued Callais after briefing closed in this case and long after the district court’s judgment,” the three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit wrote in the Tuesday ruling. “The appropriate response to such a significant change of law is to vacate and remand, so the district court may reconsider, in the first instance, whether Georgia’s redistricting plans violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act under the updated Callais framework.”
The appeals court was made up of Obama-appointed Judge Robin Rosenbaum, Trump-appointed Judge Barbara Lagoa, and Clinton-appointed Judge Charles Wilson. The three-judge panel now sends the case back to Obama-appointed Jones.
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Georgia had been a key part of the national redistricting conversation in the wake of the Callais decision, as politicos waited to see if the Peach State would rush to redistrict between the April decision and its May primary. As pressure had increased on Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) to suspend the state’s primary elections and take up a redistricting measure, he ultimately opted to call a special legislative session to consider redistricting ahead of the 2028 elections.
State lawmakers then called off the redistricting special session in mid-June, saying they wanted ample time to consider the implications of the Callais decision, as the state’s lawsuit over the 2021 maps was still pending in an appeals court.