ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s Republican legislative leaders on Wednesday rejected Gov. Brian Kemp’s call to redraw congressional and legislative districts during a special session, citing concerns about moving too quickly after a U.S. Supreme Court decision weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters.
The aborted effort to reduce nonwhite voters’ representation contrasts with other Southern states where Republican majorities moved quickly to redraw congressional boundaries ahead of the November midterms, partly in response to President Donald Trump’s pleas to shore up the GOP’s fragile House majority.
Civil rights activists and Democrats, especially Black and other nonwhite lawmakers, celebrated the development and claimed victory after exerting weeks of pressure and gathering hundreds of citizens at the Georgia Capitol on Wednesday ahead of the session.
“Today showed that ordinary people don’t need to wait until November to make their voices heard and protect our democracy,” said U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, the state’s first Black senator who returned to Atlanta from Washington to be at the Capitol. “We can stand up and speak right now.”
Kemp had not asked his fellow Republicans to reopen Georgia districts ahead of November. Instead, he wanted them to redraw congressional boundaries for the 2028 election. But the governor, in the final months of his second term, also called on lawmakers to redraw their own districts — a move that would have made Georgia the first state to apply the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision to its legislature.