ATLANTA — Congresswoman Lucy McBath will once again be running for office in 2024, albeit in a different district.
Following new redistricting maps, McBath will be running in Georgia's 6th district, not the 7th, which she currently represents in office.
Why McBath is running in a new district
On Thursday afternoon, a federal judge with the United States District Court for the Northern District ruled the boundaries drawn by lawmakers during a special session can stand and will be in effect for the next elections in 2024.
The Republican-majority legislature had been told to re-draw the state's congressional and state districts after the original ones drawn in 2021 were determined in October to undercut the electoral power of Black voters in the western part of metro Atlanta. In order to correct this, a federal judge told lawmakers to create one additional majority-Black congressional district -- without eliminating "minority opportunity districts elsewhere."
Lawmakers -- led by the GOP -- radically reconfigured some Democratic-held districts that don't have Black majorities, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath's 7th District in the Atlanta suburbs.
What the congresswoman thinks about the new maps
Challengers, including McBath, attacked the new boundaries, arguing in a Dec. 20 federal court hearing that they did not increase opportunities for Black voters and instead just shuffled them from one district to another, especially after dissolving McBath's seat.
However, the judge ultimately disagreed with the challengers, saying that lawmakers were not constrained to making changes in the affected districts identified by the court and the court could not intrude on the "domain of the General Assembly" anyway because redistricting is a "legislative task (which) the federal courts to make every effort not to preempt."
McBath released a statement on Thursday voicing her frustration over the changes:
"I refuse to allow an extremist few Republicans decide when my work in Congress is finished. I hope that the judicial system will not allow the state legislature to suppress the will of Georgia voters. However, if the maps passed by the state legislature stand for the 2024 election cycle, I will be running for re-election to Congress in GA-06 because too much is at stake to stand down.”
