On Tuesday the National Redistricting Foundation, a left-leaning group led by former attorney general Eric Holder, filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia, alleging that state lawmakers gerrymandered two districts based along racial lines, preserving the tightly contested Republican seats for the GOP.
The two districts in question, the 105th and 111th, saw their lines slightly redrawn in 2015. A pair of Republicans, Joyce Chandler and Brian Strickland, respectively, were already incumbents at the time of the redistricting. In 2016 both candidates won re-election, with Chandler defeating Donna McLeod by just over 200 votes, and Strickland winning out over Democrat Darryl Payton by nearly 1,000 votes.
The fact that both McLeod and Payton are African American is a key part of the suit, as Holder argues that Republicans purposefully gerrymandered the districts to prevent a black candidate from being elected, a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Holder wants a judge to invalidate the districts and create “at least one additional majority-minority district in the Atlanta metropolitan area.”
Holder’s lawsuit is part of a larger national strategy by Democrats to challenge the GOP’s redistricting power, which it won in many states during its successful 2010 midterm elections. The Supreme Court this week is hearing a similar case from Wisconsin that seeks to determine what limits can be placed by the courts on partisan redrawing of districts.
A similar case in Texas this year resulted in a win for Republicans, as the courts declined to make the state redraw any lines prior to the 2018 elections. In North Carolina Republicans were found to be racially gerrymandering, but only slight redistricting was mandated by the judge as a ruling.
The case was filed in the Federal District Court in Atlanta, and if past cases are any indicator it could find its way moving up to before the Supreme Court before long.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office is unable to comment on pending litigation.
