THE HISTORY OF REDISTRICTING IN GEORGIA.

In his memoirs, Chief Justice Earl Warren singled out the redistricting cases as the most significant decisions of his tenure on the Court.1 A review of the changes redistricting introduced in Georgia supports Warren's assessment. Not only have the obligations to equalize populations across districts and to do so in a racially fair manner transformed the makeup of the state's collegial bodies, Georgia has provided the setting for multiple cases that have defined the requirements to be met when designing districts. Other than the very first adjustments that occurred in the 1960s, changes in Georgia plans had to secure approval from the federal government pursuant to the Voting Rights Act. Also, the first four decades of the Redistricting Revolution occurred with a Democratic legislature and governor in place. Not surprisingly, the partisans in control of redistricting sought to protect their own and as that became difficult they employed more extreme measures. When in the minority, Republicans had no chance to enact plans on their own. Beginning in the 1980s and peaking a decade later, Republicans joined forces with black Democrats to devise alternatives to the proposals of white Democrats. The biracial, bipartisan coalition never had sufficient numbers to enact its ideas. After striking out in the legislature, African-Americans appealed to the U.S. Attorney General alleging that the plans enacted were less favorable to black interests than alternatives offered by the coalition. Every iteration, save for the plans drawn in the 1960s and 2011, bore the marks of what the Department of Justice (DOJ) believed necessary to secure equal treatment of African-Americans. As will become clear in the course of this Article, the DOJ's perspective has changed over time. This Article is arranged chronologically and examines each of the major rounds of redistricting. Aside from adjusting for population shifts, which remain constant, a different concern or theme dominated each round. In the 1960s, Georgia and other states were like individuals who had begun flexing long-ignored muscles as they set about adjusting lines that had gone unchanged for decades. In the 1970s, as the need for redistricting merged with demands from the Voting Rights Act, pushback occurred as it did in the many other aspects of racial interaction as the nation finally began to take seriously its commitment to equality. A decade later, Georgia encountered a DOJ that had precise quantitative goals for what was necessary to provide African-Americans an opportunity to elect their preferences. In the 1990s, DOJ incorporated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act into its preclearance reviews and demanded that Georgia enhance the number of majority-black districts and that it maximize the black percentage in those districts. The turn of the new century found the generations-long Democratic control of Georgia slipping away and the majority party pulled out all the stops desperately trying to cling to power. Democratic efforts could not withstand the tide of partisan realignment and court challenges so that in 2011 Republicans sat at the computer terminals and redistricted Georgia. Republicans attempted to maximize their control over the legislature by devising plans that might produce super-majorities with two-thirds of the seats in each chamber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]