Statehouses, Cities Eye Redistricting  06/08 06:12

   

   (AP) -- After a blitz of congressional redistricting ahead of the midterm 
elections, a national battle for partisan control is about to enter a new phase 
that could affect representation on everything from tax rates to social safety 
net programs, teacher salaries, housing regulations and local road repairs.

   Georgia's Republican-led Legislature will convene June 17 for a special 
session focused on redistricting for the 2028 elections. The agenda includes 
new voting districts not only for Congress, but also for the state House and 
Senate -- and potentially even the state's utility regulatory commission.

   It will mark the first time since a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling 
weakened minority voting protections that a state legislature will attempt to 
redraw its own districts. Mississippi Republicans and New York Democrats also 
could undertake legislative redistricting before their 2027 and 2028 elections, 
respectively.

   Ir remains to be seen, though, how many legislatures will follow, and 
whether the outburst of mid-decade redistricting will extend down to county 
commissions, city councils and school boards that make myriad decisions 
affecting people's lives. The impact could be widespread.

   "The stakes here are not political, they are deeply human," said Joe Kennedy 
III, founder of Groundwork Project, a nonprofit that supports local civil 
rights and democracy organizations.

   What's fueling the redistricting movement?

   Voting district boundaries typically are redrawn once a decade after each 
U.S. census to account for population changes. But last summer, President 
Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans to redraw congressional districts to try 
to win additional seats in the midterm elections. Other states followed with 
their own partisan gerrymandering.

   Then a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in late April jumpstarted even more 
redistricting. The court struck down a majority-Black congressional district in 
Louisiana as an illegal racial gerrymander, providing grounds for Republicans 
in other states to reshape districts with large minority populations that have 
elected Democrats.

   Why is Georgia redrawing its districts?

   A federal judge ruled in 2023 that some of Georgia's congressional, state 
Senate and state House districts were drawn in a racially discriminatory 
manner. The Legislature quickly approved revised maps with new majority-Black 
districts, though they resulted in little change to Republican majorities in 
the 2024 elections.

   Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has called lawmakers into special session to 
again redraw districts in light of the Supreme Court's decision in the 
Louisiana case. That could allow Republicans to undo the court-ordered changes 
they made in 2023 and potentially redraw other Democratic-held minority 
districts to the GOP's advantage.

   Republicans have yet to unveil details of their plans. But Democratic state 
Rep. Tanya Miller, who is running for attorney general, denounced the upcoming 
redistricting as a means of "rigging maps to maintain power."

   How many seats are at stake?

   Several months before the Supreme Court ruling, a report by Fair Fight 
Action and Black Voters Matter forecast that Republicans in 10 Southern states 
could eliminate 191 Democratic-held legislative seats -- including 140 
districts with Black or Hispanic majorities -- if the Supreme Court gutted 
federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities.

   "If anything, our report was an understatement," Cliff Albright, co-founder 
and executive director of Black Voters Matter, recently told The Associated 
Press. "What's at stake is the future of this democracy."

   Other analysts don't expect that many seats to be redistricted. But they do 
expect the Supreme Court's decision to ripple through states.

   "We're going to potentially see a lot of frenzied efforts at every level, 
including at the local level, to try out undoing district maps and 
configurations that have performed quite well in providing improved 
representation for communities of color," said Kareem Crayton, vice president 
of the Washington office of the Brennan Center for Justice.

   What states have pending court cases?

   The precedent from the recent Supreme Court decision already is being 
applied in several states. In light of the ruling, a federal appeals court is 
allowing Alabama to use a state Senate map approved by Republican lawmakers in 
this year's election instead of one imposed by a federal judge who found the 
state had diluted the voting power of Black residents. The change affects two 
state Senate districts in the Montgomery area.

   The Supreme Court has sent legislative redistricting cases filed on behalf 
of Black voters in Mississippi and Native Americans in North Dakota back to 
lower courts for further consideration in light of its Louisiana decision. The 
Washington attorney general has asked the Supreme Court to do the same for 
legislative redistricting cases involving Hispanic voters in that state.

   What's stopping states from redistricting?

   About half the states have provisions in their constitutions prohibiting 
mid-decade redistricting of state legislative seats, said Justin Levitt, a law 
professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who runs the "All About 
Redistricting" website.

   But even in states where it's allowed, lawmakers may have fewer reasons to 
redraw their own districts than those for Congress, Levitt said. Politicians 
who promoted congressional redistricting for the 2026 midterms often justified 
it as a way to counter gerrymandering in other states and win as many seats as 
possible for their party. They had extra motivation because a swing of only a 
few seats nationally in the November elections could affect control of the 
closely divided U.S. House.

   By contrast, most state legislative chambers already are dominated by one 
party.

   "There's a lot less incentive, if you already control the state legislature 
by 10 or 12 seats, to eke out an incremental one or two at the expense of 
really ticking off your own party membership, or at the expense of maybe 
risking losing seats in a broader way," Levitt said.

   Could local governments also redraw districts?

   The Supreme Court decision making it more difficult to prove Voting Rights 
Act violations already has affected some local governments.

   Plaintiffs have voluntarily dismissed a challenge to commission districts in 
Meriwether County, Georgia. A federal court has accepted new legal briefs in a 
challenge to Board of Supervisors districts in DeSoto County, Mississippi. And 
Indiana's attorney general has asked a federal appeals court to take note of 
the Louisiana case when deciding a challenge to how judges are selected in Lake 
County.

   Over roughly the past four decades, data from the University of Michigan 
shows that cities, counties and school boards have been involved in more than 
three-fifths of the 466 lawsuits alleging violations of Section 2 of the Voting 
Rights Act, which forbids providing minorities less opportunity than other 
voters to elect the representatives of their choice.

   But that doesn't necessarily mean local governments will rush to redistrict 
as a result of a weakened Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court decision cleared 
the way for officials to justify redistricting based on partisan ambitions. But 
many local offices are officially nonpartisan.