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.

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.

Litigation over racial gerrymandering claims could result in South Carolina having to redraw part of its congressional map, which the GOP-controlled state government implemented in early 2022. Civil rights groups sued over the lines, arguing that the 1st, 2nd and 5th congressional districts constituted racial gerrymanders intended to discriminate against Black voters. In January, a panel of federal judges rejected the plaintiff’s claims regarding the 2nd and 5th districts, but struck down the 1st District as a racial gerrymander. The court ruled that in redrawing the seat, which had been competitive under the old lines, Republican mapmakers had impermissibly reduced the influence of Black voters in the Charleston area by moving many into the plurality-Black 6th District, which runs from Columbia to Charleston.

Whether this legal challenge will force the state to adjust its districts remains to be seen, however. In May, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and oral arguments will start in mid-October. One potential wrinkle is the role of Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, a longtime powerbroker on Capitol Hill and leader in his state party. A ProPublica investigation found that Clyburn’s team had close contact with GOP officials during redistricting, and that his desire for additional Black voters to be added to his 6th District seat, which had lost substantial population over the past decade, potentially played a role in some of Republican mapping decisions.