March 9, 2025 Story by: Editor
Inequities continue to shape U.S. elections, with disparities in voter participation persisting over time. As noted by researchers, the gap in voter turnout between white and Black Americans has widened since the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which weakened key provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
One of the law’s remaining protections, Section 2, prohibits electoral practices that dilute the voting strength of racial or ethnic groups. Analyzing successful Section 2 challenges that led to the creation of new majority-Black districts in the 2024 election, findings indicate that proper enforcement of the Voting Rights Act helps mitigate race-based discrimination, boosting Black voter participation and narrowing the racial turnout gap.
In Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, courts ruled that previous district maps violated Section 2 by diluting Black voting power, leading to orders for new district maps. These revised maps introduced a new majority-Black district in each state for the 2024 election. Notably, Alabama’s remedial district plan marked the first time in the state’s history that two majority-Black districts were established.
The establishment of majority-Black districts plays a crucial role in ensuring Black voters have a fair chance to elect representatives of their choice. Nationwide, and in these three states specifically, Black voter turnout remains lower than that of white voters due to various factors, including voter ID laws, restricted polling access, high incarceration rates, and historical disenfranchisement.
Earlier research from the 1990s on minority-opportunity districts produced mixed results regarding voter turnout effects. However, a 2016 analysis leveraging extensive voter registration data found that Black voter participation increased as the Black population in a district grew.
Using voter registration data from Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana for the 2024 election, analysis indicates that being drawn into a majority-Black district increased Black voter participation by up to six percentage points, reducing the white-Black turnout gap by two to four points.
Remedial Districts in Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana
The introduction of additional majority-Black congressional districts in these states followed prolonged legal battles.
In Alabama, where Black residents make up over 25% of the population, the state legislature initially created only one majority-Black district out of seven (14%) in the 2022 redistricting.
This arrangement concentrated Black voters in the Seventh Congressional District—comprising Birmingham and areas near Montgomery—while splitting Black communities in the southern part of the state between the First and Second Congressional Districts. Under this map, based on post-2024 voter data, the Seventh District had a Black population of 60.8%, while the First and Second Districts had 26.1% and 30.9% Black residents, respectively, leaving one-third of Alabama’s Black population confined to a single district.
Black voters challenged this map in court, arguing it unlawfully diluted their voting power. A district court ruled in their favor, ordering Alabama to redraw the map to include two majority-Black districts. However, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily halted the order, allowing the original map to remain for the 2022 elections.
In June 2023, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Allen v. Milligan, upholding the lower court’s decision to require a second majority-Black district. Despite this, Alabama’s legislature approved a revised map that still contained only one majority-Black district, with another district featuring a Black voting-age population just below 40%.
After the Supreme Court rejected Alabama’s attempt to retain its map, a court-appointed special master intervened, and on October 5, a federal court approved a new map for the 2024 election. The new plan created two majority-Black districts—the Second and Seventh. The Second District incorporated portions of the previous First, Second, and Seventh Districts, forming a majority-Black district across the southern part of Alabama, including counties like Barbour, Russell, and Mobile.
Louisiana also saw a protracted legal struggle to secure a second majority-Black district. Following the 2020 redistricting, only one of Louisiana’s six congressional districts (17%) was majority-Black, even though Black voters comprised over 30% of the state’s voting-age population. Black voters challenged this as a Section 2 violation, leading a district court to order a new map, a decision upheld by the Fifth Circuit.
In January 2024, Louisiana redrew its congressional boundaries to establish a second majority-Black district. The newly formed Sixth Congressional District connected Baton Rouge in the southeast to Shreveport in the northwest, incorporating communities along Interstate 49. This district included portions from almost every existing district except the First. Around half of its population was drawn from the Fourth and Sixth Districts outlined in the 2022 plan.
Shortly after the map’s approval, white voters challenged it in court, alleging racial gerrymandering. In April 2024, a three-judge panel struck it down, but the U.S. Supreme Court put that ruling on hold pending an appeal. Consequently, Louisiana’s new map—with two majority-Black districts—will remain in effect for the time being. The Supreme Court is scheduled to review the case on March 24.
In Georgia, the fight for a new majority-Black district was less complicated but yielded mixed results. A court had struck down the 2022 district map, prompting the state legislature to eliminate a multiracial district in the Atlanta suburbs and replace it with a majority-Black district. This involved adjusting the lines of the Seventh Congressional District, which was already about one-third Black and represented by Lucy McBath. Outside of Atlanta’s metropolitan area, the remedial redistricting process left much of the state’s map unchanged.
Although the court denied a request to block Georgia’s 2022 election map, a federal judge ruled in 2023 that it violated the Voting Rights Act, ordering a new majority-Black district for the 2024 elections. The revised maps were implemented, though legal disputes over Georgia’s congressional boundaries remain ongoing.
Turnout Effects
Using voter registration data following the 2024 election, analysts examined whether Black registrants in newly created majority-Black districts had higher turnout rates than those in other districts.
In Alabama and Louisiana, Black voter turnout was approximately two percentage points higher in majority-Black districts compared to other areas. In Georgia, however, turnout among Black registrants in majority-Black districts was slightly lower—by about one-fifth of a percentage point—than in other parts of the state.
These variations may be due to the nature of the remedial maps. Alabama and Louisiana introduced entirely new majority-Black districts, while Georgia’s changes primarily restructured an already diverse district in the Atlanta region. While these trends suggest a correlation between turnout and the Black population in these districts, they do not definitively prove that the new maps caused the increased participation.
To further assess the impact, researchers compared turnout among voters who were redrawn into majority-Black districts versus those moved into other districts. The proportion of voters affected was nearly 9% in Georgia, 17% in Alabama, and 20% in Louisiana.
Results showed a positive turnout effect in all three states. Black voter participation increased by nearly three-quarters of a percentage point in Alabama, six points in Georgia, and two points in Louisiana. These differences were statistically significant, meaning that the creation of new majority-Black districts led to increased voter engagement—ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 additional Black voters per state.
This also helped narrow the racial turnout gap. Among voters drawn into majority-Black districts, the white-Black turnout gap decreased by two percentage points in Alabama, 3.5 points in Louisiana, and nearly four points in Georgia—all statistically significant findings. These results highlight how majority-Black districts contribute to closing racial disparities in electoral participation.
Conclusion
The 2024 remedial redistricting in Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana provided an opportunity to evaluate how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act influences voter participation. Findings demonstrate that enforcing these protections increased Black voter turnout.
However, litigation continues in these states. In Georgia, activists are challenging the remedial map as an inadequate solution to vote dilution. Alabama’s three-judge panel is weighing arguments to reinstate the previous map with only one majority-Black district. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to decide the fate of Louisiana’s map for the 2026 elections. Ensuring that voters of color can elect candidates of their choice through fair redistricting remains a key factor in fostering greater electoral participation.
Source: Brennan Center
