Feds drop Georgia lawsuit over Black voter suppression

(CN) ­— Attorney General Pamela Bondi directed the Department of Justice on Monday to dismiss a Biden-era lawsuit that accused Georgia of intentionally suppressing Black voters’ votes.

Ina scathing release announcing the lawsuit’s dismissal, Bondi accused the Biden administration of creating “an untrue narrative” about Georgia’s 2021 election law.

The lawsuit, filed in June 2021 under then-President Joe Biden, challenged a sweeping election overhaul that Georgia Republican lawmakers passed in the wake of President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state. The Biden Justice Department argued the new voting regulations placed a disproportionate burden on Black voters and their ability to equally participate in the political process.

“Georgians deserve secure elections, not fabricated claims of false voter suppression meant to divide us. Americans can be confident that this Department of Justice will protect their vote and never play politics with election integrity," Bondi said in the statement.

Bondi said Black voter turnout in Georgia “actually increased” after the law, Senate Bill 202, was passed. A December analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice found that while the number of ballots cast by Black voters increased from 2020 to 2024, Black turnout actually declined by 0.6% because the increase in the number of ballots cast by Black voters did not keep up with increases in population.

“Understanding whether, or to what extent, these declines are due to restrictive voting policies such as Georgia’s S.B. 202, justifiable feelings that the government is not working for them, or myriad other factors will be of signal importance,” the center wrote in its analysis.

The announcement comes after Trump’s new Justice Department leadership put a freeze on all federal civil rights litigation, including consent agreements between local governments like those in Louisville and Minneapolis to address police reform after the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had asked Bondi to drop the case last month, calling the law common-sense reforms.

“This reaffirms that the Election Integrity Act stands on solid legal ground,” Raffensperger said Monday. “Our commitment has always been to ensure fair and secure elections for every Georgian, despite losing an All-Star game and the left’s boycott of Georgia as a result of common-sense election law.”

Raffensperger criticized Biden’s claims that the law was “Jim Crow in the 21 century," which led to a wave of boycotts from major companies, such as the Major League Baseball 2025 All-Star Game being moved from Atlanta to Denver. It was even featured in a season of Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm," where David was arrested for handing out a bottle of water in an election line in Atlanta.

In January 2024, a federal judge denied the government’s request for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of certain parts of the law. U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee found the Justice Department failed to show a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of the claims.

SB 202 added a voter ID requirement for absentee voting, shortened the time period for requesting a mailed ballot and limited the amount of ballot drop boxes available in populous metro Atlanta counties that lean Democratic and have a significant Black population. The law also banned handing out food and water to voters standing in line to cast a ballot.

In addition to the Justice Department lawsuit, several other suits filed by civil rights and election integrity groups challenging the constitutionality of other provisions of the law under the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in voting, remain pending.

Preliminary court rulings have upheld most of the law, and a Trump-appointed federal judge dismissed a separate case against the law this month.

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