A judge is vetoing Cobb County’s bid to draw its own electoral districts, upholding state power

July 26th, 2024

A sign showing the way for voters stands outside a Cobb County voting building during the first day of early voting, Monday, Oct. 17, 2022, in Marietta, Georgia. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A Georgia judge is batting down an attempt by a local government to overrule state lawmakers and draw its own electoral districts, in a ruling that reinforces the supremacy of state government over local government.

Cobb County Superior Court Judge Kellie Hill on Thursday ruled that the county can’t draw its own maps. Because candidates for two Cobb County Commission seats had already been nominated in primaries under the county-drawn maps, Hill ruled that the general election for those seats can’t go forward in November. Instead, Cobb County election officials must schedule a new primary and general election, probably in 2025.

The ruling in a lawsuit brought by prospective Republican county commission candidate Alicia Adams means residents in Georgia’s third-largest county will elect two county commissioners in districts mapped by the Republican-majority legislature, and not a map later drawn by the Democratic-majority Cobb County Commission.

“The court, having ruled the Home Rule Map unconstitutional in the companion appeal action finds that plaintiff has a clear legal right to seek qualification as a candidate for the Cobb County Commission, post 2, using the Legislative Map and, if qualified, to run in a special primary for that post,” Hill wrote in her decision.

The dispute goes back to Republican lawmakers’ decision to draw election district lines for multiple county commissions and school boards that was opposed by Democratic lawmakers representing Democratic-majority counties.

In most states, local governments are responsible for redrawing their own district lines once every 10 years, to adjust for population changes after U.S. Census results are released. But in Georgia, while local governments may propose maps, local lawmakers traditionally have to sign off.

If Cobb County had won the power to draw its own districts, many other counties could have followed. In 2022, Republicans used their majorities to override the wishes of local Democratic lawmakers to draw districts in not only Cobb, but in Fulton, Gwinnett, Augusta-Richmond and Athens-Clarke counties. Democrats decried the moves as a hostile takeover of local government.

But the Cobb County Commission followed up by asserting that under the county government’s constitutional home rule rights, counties could draw their own maps. In an earlier lawsuit, the state Supreme Court said the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit didn’t have standing to sue because the outcome wasn’t going to personally affect them.

That’s not the case for Adams, who lives inside the District 2 drawn by lawmakers and filed to run for commission, but who was disqualified because she didn’t live inside the District 2 drawn by county commissioners. At least two people who sought to qualify as Democrats were turned away for the same reason.

The terms of current District 2 Commissioner Jerica Richardson and District 4 Commissioner Monique Sheffield expire at the end of 2024. Democrats had been displeased with the earlier map because it drew Richardson out of her district. Richardson later launched a failed Democratic primary bid for Congress, losing to U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath.

The Cobb County election board said Friday that it would not appeal.

“The Board of Elections has maintained a neutral position on the validity of the Home Rule Map from the very beginning of this dispute and does not foresee a need to appeal these orders,” the board said in a statement released by attorney Daniel White.