Georgia Republican legislative leaders reject governor’s call for 2028 redistricting

People demonstrate during a special legislative session at the state capitol, Wednesday, June 17, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)2026-06-17T04:20:58Z ATLANTA (AP) — Republican lawmakers in Georgia said Wednesday that they won’t redraw congressional and state legislative districts for the 2028 elections during a special session called by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.In a letter to Kemp, Republican House leaders said changes to Georgia’s maps should take place only after a deliberative process providing the public ample opportunity for input. They also noted that legal challenges are still ongoing against some of their current districts.The decision marked a setback for both Kemp and President Donald Trump, who has urged Republican-led states to redraw congressional districts to their advantage.THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia is the next Southern state where Republicans are convening to redraw voting districts in ways that could diminish the political power of Black and other nonwhite voters after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Voting Rights Act provisions that helped shape existing boundaries in racially diverse states. The General Assembly convenes Wednesday in a special session called by outgoing Gov. Brian Kemp in response to the court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, which struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander. Kemp, who is in the final months of his second term, deviated from other governors who fast-tracked new congressional maps for the November midterms partly in response to President Donald Trump’s pleas to shore up the party’s chances at maintaining control of Congress. Kemp instead wants Georgia lawmakers to draw districts for the 2028 elections. Yet the governor moved ahead of his Southern counterparts by asking the Republican-controlled Assembly to redraw its own boundaries, as well. Read More That would make Georgia the first state to apply Callais to its legislature and demonstrate the cascading effect of the high court’s decision across Southern states with the nation’s highest proportions of Black voters and Black lawmakers. The issue is especially salient in Georgia, where the Capitol complex includes a statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and sits blocks from where the slain civil rights icon lived, preached and led the movement that yielded the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Still, neither Kemp nor Republican legislative leaders had unveiled proposed changes as of Wednesday morning, frustrating Democrats and activists who plan daily demonstrations throughout the session.“They have not been transparent,” said state Rep. Tanya Miller, a Black legislator from Atlanta who is the Democratic nominee for attorney general. “Something as fundamental as voters getting to choose their leaders ought not to be done in the dark, ought not happen in back rooms.”Several Republican lawmakers said Wednesday morning they still had not seen proposed districts, and Kemp’s office had not scheduled any public remarks from the governor.House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, a veteran of earlier redistricting efforts, said Tuesday that the outcome “will be a legislative prerogative” — a notion Kemp aides confirmed. But Jones said that even as a top-ranking Republican on the committee that would consider new maps, she hasn’t “been in any room creating maps.” Asked directly who is drawing new districts, she replied: “I don’t know.” Conservative justices gave the green lightBefore Callais, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was understood to require maps — for Congress, state legislatures and local legislative bodies — that gave historically marginalized minorities a reasonable chance to select candidates of their choice. Nationally and in Georgia, those so-called “opportunity districts” have disproportionately elected Black and other nonwhite representatives.For example, about a third of Georgia’s 180 state representatives are Black. Latino, Asian and other minorities bring the total nonwhite share to about 40% — roughly reflecting the state’s overall population. Georgia’s U.S. House delegation has five districts out of 14 total where the electorate is majority or plurality nonwhite. All elected Black Democrats in 2024. With the Callais ruling, issued earlier this spring, a conservative majority of justices concluded that jurisdictions drawn with racial makeup in mind are discriminatory and violate the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause. The justices declared that apportionment should be “race neutral.”Their stated reasoning did not hinge on party interests, and federal courts have said partisan gerrymandering is constitutionally permissible. But in Southern states, especially, party loyalty dovetails considerably with race and ethnicity. So the decision has allowed Republicans — a party dominated by white people — to redraw maps to goose likely GOP districts by redistributing nonwhite voters who tend to sup