Holder-Led Group Challenges Georgia Redistricting, Claiming Racial Bias
Source: New York Times
By ALEXANDER BURNSOCT. 3, 2017
A Democratic group led by the former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. has accused the State of Georgia of flouting the Voting Rights Act, claiming that Georgia Republicans reshaped two state legislative districts to minimize the electoral influence of African-American voters.
Mr. Holders group, the National Redistricting Foundation, is expected to file suit in Federal District Court in Atlanta on Tuesday. The complaint charges that race was the predominant factor in adjusting two districts the 105th and 111th in the Atlanta area where white lawmakers had faced spirited challenges from black Democrats.
Both districts were drawn in 2015, through an unusually timed redistricting law that the lawsuit claims violated the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment.
Mr. Holder said Georgias district map was a particularly egregious case of racial gerrymandering, aimed at restraining the political clout of Atlanta and its suburbs. With the redistricting measure, Mr. Holder said, Republicans had brought about the silencing of the states approximately three million or so African-American residents.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/us/eric-holder-georgia-redistricting-racial-bias.html
Gothmog
(143,998 posts)Gerrymandering is a favorite GOP tactic
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)Drag Republicans anti-vote policies through the courts! There should be hundreds of official challenges, the local level too.