NYT: “Civil rights activists and protesters assembled in Atlanta, considered the cradle of the civil rights movement, determined to fight against the kind of aggressive legislative action they had seen play out across the South in recent weeks.”
Today, the 2026 special legislative session ended without Georgia Republicans attempting to draw new maps to exploit the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Following a massive mobilization by Georgia voters last week, Republicans backed down from their redistricting scheme that would have diluted Black voters’ power and undermined fair representation in our state.
The Democratic Party of Georgia joined Democratic legislative leaders and an expansive coalition of advocacy, faith, and civil rights organizations to oppose Republican redistricting efforts, including organizing voters to call Governor Kemp and their Republican legislators and joining massive demonstrations at the Georgia State Capitol.
Read more about the massive pushback from Georgia voters and organizers that pressured Republicans to drop redistricting:
New York Times: Georgia Republicans Shelve Redistricting Amid Mounting Protests :
By Rick Rojas, Sean Keenan and Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon / June 17, 2026
Key points:
- Republicans in the Georgia State Legislature, facing mounting anger from Black leaders, scuttled plans to take up redistricting on Wednesday during a special session that had been called expressly to erase U.S. House seats in majority-Black districts.
- Gov. Brian Kemp called the session to draw legislative maps before the 2028 election with the aim of creating boundaries more favorable to Republicans. Georgia was to be the latest Southern state to consider redistricting after a recent Supreme Court ruling that weakened Voting Rights Act protections for Black representation.
- But civil rights activists and protesters assembled in Atlanta, considered the cradle of the civil rights movement, determined to fight against the kind of aggressive legislative action they had seen play out across the South in recent weeks. Marches and demonstrations greeted lawmakers as they gathered for the special session.
- Then, less than an hour before the legislative session was gaveled in, top Republican lawmakers stood under the capitol dome and announced redistricting was off, at least for now.
- […] Republican legislative leaders cited a desire for a more methodical process that included greater input from voters and a better understanding of how the legal challenges to the congressional maps rushed through by lawmakers in other states would hold up in court.
- But it was also a recognition of the far more complicated landscape that Republicans face in Georgia compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the Deep South, including the possibility that they could pay a steep political price in the November election.
- […] But as the session approached, other Republicans grew concerned that redistricting for 2028 less than five months before Election Day this year could energize Democrats, given that pivotal statewide races are on the ballot. Those include the governor’s office being vacated by Mr. Kemp and the Senate seat held by Jon Ossoff, a Democrat seeking re-election.
- The impediments unique to Georgia Republicans went beyond the election calendar. The state has evolved into the most important swing state in the Deep South; Republicans still control most levers of power in Georgia, but Democrats are now competitive after years of a bleak run.
- […] Democrats and other activists hailed the development on Wednesday as a sign that their influence, built up through the hard work of the civil rights movement and the efforts in more recent years to harness the state’s diversity, is growing.
- “This is a victory, for now,” State Representative Saira Draper, a Democrat, said in an interview on Wednesday. “Certainly, it’s a very exciting moment. It shows that political civic engagement works when the people are paying attention and responding.”
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