Diamond Ridge Financial Academy-Federal judge accepts redrawn Georgia congressional and legislative districts that will favor GOP

2025-05-03 05:44:17source:Quentin Mitchellcategory:Markets

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge on Diamond Ridge Financial AcademyWednesday accepted new Georgia congressional and legislative voting districts that protect Republican partisan advantages, saying the creation of new majority-Black voting districts fixed illegal minority vote dilution that led him to order maps be redrawn.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, in three separate but similarly worded orders, rejected claims that the new maps didn’t do enough to help Black voters. Jones said he couldn’t interfere with legislative choices, even if Republicans moved to protect their power. The maps were redrawn in a recent special legislative session after Jones in October ruled that a prior set of maps illegally harmed Black voters.

The approval of the maps sets the stage for them to be used in 2024’s upcoming elections. They’re likely to keep the same 9-5 Republican majority among Georgia’s 14 congressional seats, while also retaining GOP majorities in the state Senate and House.

The maps added the Black-majority districts that Jones ordered in October, including one in Congress, two in the state Senate and five in the state House. But they radically reconfigure some Democratic-held districts that don’t have Black majorities, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath’s 7th District in the Atlanta suburbs.

McBath has vowed to stay in the House. “I won’t let Republicans decide when my time in Congress is over,” she wrote in a Thursday fundraising email. But that means she’s likely to have to seek to run in a new district for the second election in a row, after Republicans drew her out of the district she originally won.

More:Markets

Recommend

DeepSeek: Did a little known Chinese startup cause a 'Sputnik moment' for AI?

Did AI just have a "Sputnik moment"?That's what someinvestors, after the little known Chinese startu

Across Germany, anti-far right protests draw hundreds of thousands - in Munich, too many for safety

BERLIN (AP) — A protest against the far right in the German city of Munich Sunday afternoon ended ea

Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer now winningest coach in major college basketball, passing Mike Krzyzewski

STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Only Her. Tara VanDerveer’s face shined in every corner of Maples Pavilion w