How Georgia’s emergency redistricting impacts Asian American voters

Georgia’s Republican-led legislature is set to redraw the state’s political maps in a June 17 special session, a move believed to roll back gains for communities of color including Asian Americans.

Georgia is entering its third redistricting cycle this decade following a 2023 court-ordered session after a federal judge found that the state’s 2021 maps had unlawfully undermined Black voters’ electoral strength. The immediate catalyst is the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which weakened the Voting Rights Act by requiring plaintiffs to prove “intentional racial discrimination” to challenge gerrymandered maps, a standard now prompting redistricting pushes in Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina.

Gov. Brian Kemp reversed his earlier position against mid-decade redistricting with a May 13 proclamation calling lawmakers back to the Capitol. Rep. Saira Draper, an Atlanta Democrat and election lawyer, said Kemp’s claim that Callais compels new maps “couldn’t be further from the truth.” Draper argued that whether the 2021 maps remain discriminatory under the new standard is an open question, with both sides’ appeals pending at the 11th U.S. Circuit and the plaintiffs’ brief not due until June 19, after the session begins.

New maps will almost certainly face further litigation, as Mercer University political science chair Chris Grant said the Supreme Court “has not been as clear as I think the lower courts would like…” on the new standard. The session begins the day after June 16 primary runoffs, with a Republican-controlled legislature positioned to produce the maps and a Republican governor to sign them. Speaking to American Community Media, Common Cause Georgia political director Kyle Gomez-Leinweber predicted “a brand-new map configuration explicitly engineered for the 2028 elections.”

Georgia’s AAPI population has grown substantially over two decades and concentrates in DeKalb, Gwinnett, Forsyth and Fulton counties, making line-drawing a direct electoral question of whether the community gains a unified political voice or has it fragmented.

In a statement, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta policy director Jennifer Lee warned that redistricting is “being used across the South to take away the voices of Black voters and weaken their electoral representation,” adding that post-Callais efforts risk suppressing the progress of all communities of color.