ATLANTA -- 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 convened 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 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.

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 that have the nation's highest proportion 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.

What the Left Is Saying

State Rep. Tanya Miller, a Black legislator from Atlanta who is the Democratic nominee for attorney general, said Republicans haven't been transparent about their plans. "Something as fundamental as voters getting to choose their leaders ought not to be done in the dark, ought not happen in back rooms," Miller said.

Emory University professor Carol Anderson compared Callais and the resulting redistricting push to poll taxes and literacy tests imposed by white Southern conservatives during the Jim Crow era. "They used racially neutral language for policies that were clearly racially targeted," Anderson said.

Anderson is also a board member of Fair Fight Action, a group organizing against the Georgia redistricting effort.

Democrats and activists plan daily demonstrations throughout the session, expressing frustration that neither Kemp nor Republican legislative leaders had unveiled proposed changes as of late Tuesday.

What the Right Is Saying

House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, a veteran of earlier redistricting efforts, said the outcome "will be a legislative prerogative" -- a notion Kemp aides confirmed. But Jones said even as a top-ranking Republican on the committee that would consider new maps, she hasn't "been in any room creating maps."

When asked directly who is drawing new districts, Jones replied: "I don't know."

The governor told The Associated Press he wasn't ready to discuss details. "I'll talk about redistricting on Wednesday," Kemp said as he campaigned for fellow Republicans ahead of Georgia's primary runoffs.

Kemp is effectively asking Republicans, especially in metro Atlanta, to redraw their own boundaries and take on new, unfamiliar territory -- a notable approach that differs from the fast-tracked maps pushed by other Southern governors.

What the Numbers Show

About one-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.

Before Callais, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was understood to require maps that gave historically marginalized minorities a reasonable chance to select candidates of their choice.

Nationally, Republicans think they could gain as many as 16 seats from redistricting efforts while Democrats think they could gain six seats from new districts in California and Utah.

The Callais ruling concluded that jurisdictions drawn with racial makeup in mind are discriminatory and violate the Constitution's equal protection clause. The justices declared that apportionment should be "race neutral."

The Bottom Line

Georgia becomes a test case for applying the Supreme Court's Callais decision to state legislative maps, not just congressional boundaries.

The risk for Republicans is that spreading nonwhite Democratic-leaning voters across more districts could create more battleground territory because white metropolitan voters are trending less conservative. This could give Democratic candidates of any race or ethnicity more chances to win.

What happens in Georgia will be watched closely by other Southern states facing similar decisions about their maps ahead of the 2028 elections.