ATLANTA — The state of Georgia is seeking another Supreme Court showdown over the Voting Rights Act, asking a federal appeals court on Thursday to interpret the 1965 law in a way that could make it much harder to prove minority votes have been illegally diluted.
A lawyer for the state on Thursday asked a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta to overturn a lower court that required lawmakers to draw more Black-majority electoral districts.
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger argued in court filings that the Voting Rights Act is being misused to bolster Democratic election chances and that white voters prefer Republicans for nonracial reasons.
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Representing the state in its appeal, Georgia Solicitor General Stephen Petrany said the evidence failed to prove white people vote the way they do because of race in the electoral districts Republicans drew.
“It is not covered when the majority simply outvotes the minority based on political polarization,” Petrany said.
But lawyers for the federal government and the groups who sued to redraw Georgia’s congressional and legislative maps say Georgia is trying persuade the judges to make up a new, harder-to-prove standard that could hobble Voting Rights Act lawsuits, less than two years after the U.S. Supreme Court turned back a separate challenge from Alabama to the landmark law.
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