Voting Rights Act ruling may challenge Ga. in new and unexpected ways
The recent Supreme Court decision on Louisiana v. Callais is like a depth bomb to Georgia politics — and to the politics of the nation writ large.
The ruling effectively allows state legislatures to eliminate minority opportunity districts that were previously required or allowed under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
While minority opportunity districts will not be unwound overnight or even in full in some cases, these districts have formed a cornerstone of Democratic Party power nationally and even more so in Georgia.
The change is going to be profound and, I suspect, when combined with President Donald Trump-induced political shifts, will produce a generational political realignment.
Political polarization tanked compromise
The current Democratic Party has become dependent on these minority opportunity districts.
Almost all are held by Democrats, with the exception of five Hispanic majority districts in Texas and Florida. Around 70 seats in the U.S. House are VRA protected, which works out to around a third of the 212 seats held by Democrats. In the Georgia Legislature this number is probably much higher.
Fair Fight — the Atlanta-based voter education and democracy-advancing organization — estimates right off the bat that Georgia could lose as many as 26 Black minority opportunity districts and 20 Democratic seats across both the Georgia House and Senate.
Fair Fight and others are raising the alarm and promising more litigation, but I don’t think this bell can be unrung.
I worked hard for the renewal of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act when I was in Congress. This bill had previously been reauthorized by Congress with broad and bipartisan margins, but by 2022, the conversation was utterly polarized.
No Republicans would support the bill. The situation was so grave that Democrats tried to take down the filibuster to pass it — and failed. I sat in the corner on the floor of the Senate listening to Georgia U.S. Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff give eloquent speeches in support, but it didn’t matter.
The coalition that supports this legislation has come to reside entirely in the Democratic Party, and while I suspect there is broad support for VRA provisions around fairness in elections and around voting, the public views race-based preferential districts quite negatively, according to 2025 Cygnal polling.
Consider Georgia’s past political coalitions
The Supreme Court decision was 6-3. There is no obvious path for litigation or legislative coalition that will restore these parts of the VRA.
The immediate implications are most definitely negative for the Black and Hispanic elected officials dependent on these districts and, by extension, for the Democratic Party. But long term?
I can’t help but think that this may turn in new and unexpected ways.
First, having representation, or “someone who looks like you” is helpful, but is really not the same as having actual political power to advance a particular community’s interests. Power in a democracy requires a community or interest group to influence broad majorities, not just be boxed in as a minority group in a minority political party.
Consider that in the 1980s through mid-1990s in Georgia, a coalition formed between white rural and urban Democrats and Black voters was responsible for a host of policies, including the HOPE scholarship, lottery-funded pre-K, higher teacher pay and no sales tax on food.
Then, starting in the mid-1990s, the Voting Rights Act districts were used to increase Black representation but had the additional effect of breaking this coalition, adding districts for white Republicans at the expense of white Democrats and reinforcing a racial realignment between the parties with the Democratic Party becoming dominated by Black leadership and the Republican Party becoming largely all white.
The loss of minority opportunity districts is not going to reset the clock and magically create a new, more diverse coalition to advance Democratic priorities. But the lesson of this era is that there is a coalition in Georgia that can be built to advance policies of importance to Democrats and, by extension, to many in the Black community.
In fact, that coalition existed in a time when the state was far more conservative than it is today; but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the Georgia General Assembly would need to be an exact replica of the demographics of the population of the state at large.
Both parties must know we aren’t in 1960s anymore
Second, this is not the 1960s.
I remember during my 2020 campaign (before COVID), a sweet friend from Boston told me that her Episcopalian church wanted to come to Georgia to assist with voter registration in the Black churches. I tried not to laugh. I have frequently attended Black churches during the end of the early voting period in Georgia where the pastor demands that everyone stand who has already voted.
Invariably, almost the entire congregation gets to its feet. Then we pray over the new voters that they will continue to vote. I would wager good money that most Black churches in Georgia turn out more voters more consistently than her Boston church.
The Black community in Georgia has built a formidable voter turnout machine organized through the churches, the Black fraternities and sororities, the NAACP and a host of other civic organizations that makes it a powerful voting bloc.
While voter suppression is always a concern, I cannot think of any group in Georgia more ferociously committed to voting and to political organizing and, at least, better positioned to extend its power well beyond its population footprint.
Ironically, many Republican leaders seem to be also living in a 1960s mindset as they try to restrict voting, not realizing that their coalition is increasingly more dependent on low-propensity voters who require making voting easier, not harder, to turn out.
One of the reasons that Democrats in Georgia have been able to absolutely clobber Republicans in low-turnout, off-cycle elections is that more and more, they are the more devoted and consistent voters — and this very much includes Black voters.
So, you can curse the darkness or light a candle. The challenge for the Democratic Party and the Black community writ large is to find a way through — to build a broader coalition to deliver on the things that they need but, in reality, we all need done. That’s ease of voting, fair and safe policing and quality, affordable healthcare.
I find the lessons of our history hopeful: It can be done.
Carolyn Bourdeaux is a former Democratic member of Congress from Georgia’s 7th District. She is a contributor to the AJC.
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