The Supreme Court won’t take up a case challenging Georgia’s system for electing its public utility board in a defeat for Black voters who argued the so-called “at-large” electoral system diluted their votes.
The justices’ refusal to get involved will potentially make it much harder for challenges to such at-large systems of voting – that challengers call a “relic of Jim Crow” – to move forward in three states in the South.
The five members of Georgia’s Public Service Commission are each elected in staggered, statewide votes – a system that a federal judge said violated the Voting Rights Act. That ruling was then reversed by the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, prompting the Black voters’ appeal to the Supreme Court.
In declining to take up the case Monday, the Supreme Court did not say anything on the merits of the arguments. However, the move leaves standing an 11th Circuit precedent that could affect other Voting Rights Act lawsuits brought in Florida, Georgia and Alabama, the three states the circuit covers.