Which states could get new congressional maps in 2024?

On Thursday, the federal judge who had struck down Georgia’s old congressional map as a racial gerrymander gave his stamp of approval to the new congressional map passed earlier this month by the Georgia legislature. The map will now go into effect for the 2024 election, although Democrats who are unhappy with the decision may still try to challenge it in court.

In response to the judge’s finding that the old map discriminated against Black voters, the new map creates a new majority-Black district, the 6th, in the western Atlanta suburbs — but it achieved this by dismantling a different majority-minority district, the 7th, in the eastern suburbs. As a result, the partisan breakdown of Georgia’s districts remains nine Republican-leaning seats and five Democratic-leaning ones.

Democrats, who of course wouldn’t mind flipping one of those Republican seats, have insisted that the old 7th District, whose voting-age population was 33 percent white, 30 percent Black and 21 percent Hispanic, was protected by the Voting Rights Act, and may continue to press their case against this new map. In the meantime, though, all eyes are on Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath, who currently represents the 7th District and would almost certainly lose if she seeks reelection there. She could either retire or decide to run in the new 6th, despite the fact that she does not live there.

For months, the U.S. House delegation from New York has been waiting to hear whether they’d run in the same districts in 2024 as they did in 2022. Now, they have their answer — or, at least part of it.

On Tuesday, New York’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, ordered the Independent Redistricting Commission to submit a revised congressional redistricting plan to the state Legislature, based on data from the 2020 Census. But what that map looks like — and which incumbents could find themselves in competitive seats — remains to be seen. The court order requested that the IRC submit a new map to the state legislature “on the earliest possible date,” with a firm deadline of Feb. 28.

Much of the drama in the coming months will center around local politics, with conflicting personalities and interests complicating what should be a relatively mundane process. But New York is home to five Republican freshmen who represent districts that Biden carried — plus former Rep. George Santos’ now-vacant seat in a sixth district that Biden carried. With Democrats in need of five additional House seats to win the majority, the race for the House runs straight through the Empire State.

But there’s little reason to expect the IRC to agree on a map this time around, when it failed to do so just two years ago. That would put map-drawing back into the hands of the state legislature — and, most likely, back into a series of court cases poking holes at the constitutionality of the new lines.

“It’s likely that there will be litigation unless both major political parties agree on a deal,” said Blair Horner, executive director of New York Public Interest Research Group, adding, “It’s hard to imagine why the Republicans would agree to any deal, given that the stakes are so high because control of the House may well run through New York in 2024.”

At least one more House race will be held on the current maps: the special election to replace Santos, scheduled for Feb. 13. In that race, county party leaders select the nominees in lieu of a traditional primary.

The big question now is which New York Republicans end up getting the short end of the stick. As Democrats celebrated the court’s decision, Rep. Mike Lawler, one of the freshman Republicans who represents a district that Biden carried, spoke out against it, characterizing it as a “pathetic” ploy meant to favor Democrats. Another Biden-district freshman Republican, Rep. Marc Molinaro said of the decision, “There’s nothing fair about this.”

On Friday, Republican legislators in Georgia released their long-awaited proposal to redraw Georgia's congressional map after a court struck it down in October for violating the Voting Rights Act. But it's unlikely to satisfy advocates for more nonwhite (and Democratic) representation.

The proposed map creates a new majority-Black district, the 6th, in the western Atlanta suburbs, as ordered by the court. But it also dismantles the 7th District in the eastern Atlanta suburbs, turning it from a majority-minority seat into one that is 67 percent white. The partisan upshot is that Georgia would maintain its current split of nine Republican-leaning seats and five Democratic-leaning seats (because the 6th District would flip from red to blue but the 7th would flip from blue to red).

Democrats and voting-rights advocates are already arguing that the new map is still illegal because of what it did to the 7th District. Indeed, the judge who struck down Georgia's old map wrote in his ruling, "The state cannot remedy the [Voting Rights Act] Section 2 violations described herein by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere in the plans." However, it's not clear if the old 7th District was protected by the Voting Rights Act. At 33 percent white, 30 percent Black and 21 percent Hispanic, it did not have a majority (or anything close) of a certain type of voter. It did have a combined Black and Hispanic majority, and courts have previously ruled that such coalition districts may be protected by the Voting Rights Act as long as both minority groups vote similarly (among other preconditions). However, it's not clear if more conservative courts (i.e., the U.S. Supreme Court) will agree in this case. Therefore, you can expect further legal battles over this map should it pass the Georgia legislature.

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.