U.S. District Judge Steve Jones Rules GOP’s Redistricting Maps Unfair to Georgia’s Black Voters

By Post Staff from News Sources

(Source The Oakland Post)

Judge Steve C. Jones of the Northern District of Georgia slapped down the redistricting maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature to accommodate the requirements of the 2020 census data and ruled that new maps must be redrawn to provide for equitable and fair representation for Black voters before the 2024 election.

Jones’ ruling demands that the Georgia State Legislature create new maps on or before Dec. 8. In his timeline he wrote, “if an acceptable remedy is not produced, there will be time for the court warning to fashion one.”

The principle of requiring Republican mapmakers to move with dispatch and deliberate speed was cited to send a clear message to Georgia and its population that the state’s one-third Black population must not be excluded.

Jones’ 506-page decision states that the court “will not allow another election cycle on redistricting plans” that had been found to be unlawful.

According to the Associated Press, Jones “ordered the state to draw two new Black-majority districts in Georgia’s 56-member state Senate and five new Black-majority districts in its 180-member state House.”

Jones decision clearly showed that he understood the geopolitical significance of Atlanta’s place, struggles and voices that had helped persuade Congress and the President to sign the 1965 Voting Rights Bill.

In his decision, Jones wrote “Georgia has made great strides since 1965 towards equality in voting. However, the evidence before this court shows that Georgia has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone.”

Jones’ Georgia Federal Court ruling will also impact voting discrimination charges that are being argued in other Southern states by Republicans who are now trying to justify congressional maps that appear to discriminate against Black voters.

In response to Jones ruling, Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, one of the plaintiffs in the case and a presiding prelate of the Sixth Episcopal District, said “While it has been a long march to justice, the decision reaffirms what so many of us already knew, that extremists in our own Legislature did indeed illegally map out the congressional and legislative districts to weaken the vote of Georgia’s Black voters.”

After citing Frederick Douglass, who once said that ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand,’ Jackson also said in a statement that “Together, the people of Georgia and our justice system have now demanded that those in power must right these wrongs and I sincerely hope that the process of now redrawing Georgia’s districts is done swiftly, thoroughly, and complies with the letter of the law.”

The Sixth Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) comprises churches within the State of Georgia, totaling over 90,000 parishioners.