As Democrats broke through in the Atlanta suburbs over the last decade, they managed to flip two House seats: the Roswell-based 6th District in 2018 and the Gwinnett County-based 7th District in 2020. But in 2022, Republican legislators partially reversed those gains, merging Reps. Lucy McBath (GA-06) and Carolyn Bourdeaux (GA-07) into one hyper-Democratic “vote sink” and drawing a new, safely Republican 6th District stretching into rural North Georgia. The result is a stable 9R-5D map without any currently competitive seats.
Both Common Cause and the state NAACP have sued in federal court to overturn the new map. They contend it’s a racial gerrymander that failed to draw a new Black opportunity district in the metro Atlanta area and that it specifically targeted McBath, a Black congresswoman (although McBath ended up beating Bourdeaux handily in the Democratic primary for the 7th District). A trial is still pending, but the upcoming Supreme Court decision in the Merrill v. Milligan case originating from Alabama is likely to determine whether Georgia’s lines get revisited.
As it stands, there’s not much to chew on
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