ATLANTA (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that Georgia can keep statewide elections for its five-member commission regulating utilities, overturning a lower court judge who found statewide elections illegally diluted Black votes.
The ruling is important beyond Georgia’s Public Service Commission because it could help protect certain statewide elections in other states subject to scrutiny for racial discrimination under the Voting Rights Act. It also could signal limits to a new wave of voting rights litigation after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a key part of the law this year in an Alabama case.
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In August 2022, U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg had ordered Georgia’s commissioners elected by district, the first time a statewide voting scheme had been overturned by a federal judge. But a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Grimberg went too far.
“Georgia chose this electoral format to protect critical policy interests and there is no evidence, or allegation, that race was a motivating factor in this decision,” Circuit Judge Elizabeth Branch wrote for the unanimous panel. “On the facts of this case, we conclude that plaintiffs’ novel remedial request fails because Georgia’s chosen form of government for the PSC is afforded protection by federalism and our precedents.”
Plaintiffs decried the ruling as sanctioning discrimination. Grimberg had found statewide elections illegally handicapped Black-favored candidates, and that such candidates would have a better chance if only voters in a district elected each candidate, making it possible to draw at least one Black-majority district.
“This ruling is another act of continuing discrimination against Black voters in Georgia,” Brionte McCorkle, the executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters and one of four plaintiffs, said in a statement. “Voters should have an opportunity to vote for a public service commissioner that…
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