Georgia Lawmakers Turn Redistricting Over to Courts

ATLANTA — The Georgia Legislature, charged with redrawing congressional districts to eliminate racial gerrymandering, threw up its hands Tuesday and adjourned, leaving the issue to the federal courts to settle.

Legislators had spent four weeks grappling with the issue, which was thrust on them in June when the Supreme Court struck down the practice of making race the dominant factor in drawing district lines.

Predictably, what started out as a mandate to redraw a single oddly shaped district turned into a nasty, exhausting, racially charged free-for-all with the two political parties and African American legislators scrambling to grab or hold on to all the power that they could.

Over the course of the special legislative session, white lawmakers tried to reduce the number of black districts from three to one, blacks threatened to form a third party and the Democratic leadership tried to weaken U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich by redrawing his district. In the end, all of the efforts foundered because no faction had the political muscle to push a bill through without compromise.

“Compromise was possible and within reach. However, I think the political will to give and take was somewhat lacking,” said Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the Democrat whose district is at the heart of the reapportioning struggle.

The battle over redistricting has national implications beyond determining what Georgia’s 11-member congressional delegation will look like. It is a precursor of the struggles expected to be played out across the South as states try to balance the court’s demands against the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, which seeks to protect minority voting strength.

The way in which boundaries are redrawn in Georgia, Texas, Florida, North Carolina and other states where districts are being challenged could reduce minority representation in Congress, which is at an all-time high. The battles could alter the partisan balance of power in Congress and also strain relations between black and white Democrats, as it did in Georgia.

Georgia House Speaker Tom Murphy, a Democrat, called the redistricting effort “absolutely the toughest, meanest, most controversial session I’ve ever been through.”

House lawmakers cheered after casting a 102-50 vote to go home Tuesday afternoon. The Senate voted 40 to 13 to quit, then prayed for God to “stir in us a new hope” that they will be able to work together on other issues next year.

The three-judge federal panel that originally threw out Georgia’s 11th District had given the state until Oct. 15 to redraw congressional boundaries. Now the court will redraw the map.

McKinney and some black lawmakers earlier had charged that white Democrats wanted to hand the task to the court as a way of avoiding the political consequences of approving a controversial map. While McKinney has questioned the impartiality of the judges, black lawmakers finally voted with whites Tuesday to adjourn after deducing that no map guaranteeing at least two majority black districts could pass the chambers.

Currently, all three of Georgia’s Democratic representatives in Congress are black; the eight Republicans are white. White Democrats entered the special session intending to undo the damage to the party by dispersing black voters.