Which states could get new congressional maps in 2024?

On Friday, a Florida appeals court reversed a lower court’s ruling that North Florida’s congressional lines were unconstitutional, reinstating the strongly pro-Republican lines pushed through by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022. That map eliminated a safely Democratic, predominantly Black district in North Florida despite the fact that the Florida Constitution prohibits diminishing the ability of Black voters to elect a candidate of their choice.

However, this is not going to be the last word on Florida’s map. The decision will almost certainly be appealed to the Florida Supreme Court.

The New Mexico Supreme Court has upheld New Mexico’s congressional map. On Monday, all five justices — all of whom are Democrats — signed an order affirming a lower court’s decision that, while New Mexico’s map is a Democratic gerrymander, it is not egregious enough to be illegal.

This wasn’t one of the major redistricting court cases that we were waiting on (looking at you, New York), but it’s still bad news for Republicans, who miss out on a chance for an easy flip in New Mexico’s 2nd District in 2024. Democrats drew New Mexico’s congressional map to make all three seats winnable for them, which took the 2nd District from a seat that voted for Trump by 12 percentage points in 2020 to one that would have voted for Biden by 6. As a result, Democrat Gabe Vasquez was able to narrowly defeat Republican Yvette Herrell here in 2022.

On Thursday, a federal judge struck down Georgia’s congressional map, saying that it violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters. The state has until Dec. 8 to draw a new map that adds an additional Black-opportunity seat in west metro Atlanta — although the state will likely try to appeal the decision.

Georgia currently has nine Republican representatives and five Democratic representatives, but it’s possible that this decision (if it holds up) could lead to Democrats flipping one of those Republican-held seats. But it’s also possible that Republicans in the Georgia legislature will comply with the judge’s order while also dismantling the safely blue 7th District, the one Democratic district in Georgia that is not predominantly Black. In this case, the partisan composition of the state’s congressional delegation would stay the same.

On Wednesday, the North Carolina state House passed a new congressional map for the Tar Heel State. Since the map had already passed the state Senate on Tuesday, it is now law. (In North Carolina, the governor has no veto power over redistricting.)

The map is an amended version of Proposal CCJ-1, the less aggressively gerrymandered of the two proposals unveiled by Republicans last week. But it is still heavily skewed toward the GOP: It creates 10 reliably Republican seats, three reliably Democratic seats and one competitive seat in a state that former President Donald Trump carried just 50 percent to 49 percent in 2020. Democratic Reps. Kathy Manning, Wiley Nickel and Jeff Jackson have now been placed in reliably red seats, meaning Republicans will almost certainly pick up three House seats as a result of this map. They could even flip a fourth, Democratic Rep. Don Davis’s 1st District, which this map makes more competitive.

Democrats will very probably sue over the new map, but they may not have much luck. Both the U.S. Supreme Court and, more recently, the North Carolina Supreme Court have said that they will not consider partisan gerrymandering claims. If the map is going to be struck down, advocates will have to prove it is a racial gerrymander.