As Georgia looks ahead to the 2026 elections, a court fight is still brewing over the election maps scheduled to be used. The federal court of appeals in Atlanta heard three cases Thursday stemming from those early maps, which were drawn by state lawmakers in response to the decennial population count in 2020. The outcome could influence the next elections, and it could inform future courts about how to interpret the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits race-based discrimination.
At issue is the way lawmakers responded to a district court’s order to redraw maps that were found to have discriminated against Black voters by diminishing their influence. The court ordered the state to redo the maps so that more districts were majority Black. The state redrew them, and the court approved the results, leading to the appeals by the American Civil Liberties Union and numerous voters. Lawyers in those three cases made many of the same points Thursday morning.
