Justice Department instructed to dismiss legal challenge to Georgia election law

ATLANTA (AP) — U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday instructed the Justice Department to dismiss a lawsuit challenging a sweeping election overhaul that Georgia Republican lawmakers passed in the wake of President Donald Trump's 2020 election loss in the state.

The lawsuit, filed in June 2021 under former President Joe Biden, alleged that the Georgia law was intended to deny Black voters equal access to the ballot. Bondi said the Biden administration was pushing “false claims of suppression.”

“Georgians deserve secure elections, not fabricated claims of false voter suppression meant to divide us,” she said.

The law was part of a trend of Republican-backed measures that tightened rules around voting, passed in the months after Trump lost his reelection bid to Biden, claiming without evidence that voter fraud cost him victory. The fallout was swift after Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the law in March 2021, with the CEOs of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola voicing criticism and Major League Baseball's commissioner deciding to move that year's All-Star Game from Atlanta's Truist Park.

Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans who drew Trump's ire when they refused to help overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia, strongly denounced the Justice Department lawsuit when it was filed. Raffensperger on Monday called Bondi's announcement “a significant win for Georgia voters.”

“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 commonsense election law,” Raffensperger said in a statement.

Kemp also welcomed Bondi's announcement. He accused Democrats and others of spreading “lies and misinformation” and said, “Georgia is one of the top states in the country for early voting and experienced record voter turnout in multiple elections since the passage of the Elections Integrity Act.”

Fair Fight Action, a voting rights advocacy organization started by former Democratic candidate for Georgia governor Stacey Abrams, slammed the plans to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the law has made it “harder — not easier — for many Georgians to vote.”

“Dismissing this case doesn’t change the truth, it just proves Trump’s DOJ will not work to protect Americans’ freedom to vote,” Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said in a statement.

Known as SB 202, the law added a voter ID requirement for mail ballots, shortened the time period for requesting a mailed ballot and resulted in fewer ballot drop boxes available in populous metro Atlanta counties that lean Democratic and have a significant Black population. The law also banned the distribution of food and water by various groups and organizations to voters standing in line to cast a ballot.

In announcing the dismissal of the lawsuit, Bondi said Black voter turnout in Georgia “actually increased” after the law 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 population increases.

“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 analysis says.

In addition to the Justice Department lawsuit, about a half-dozen other suits were filed by civil rights and election integrity groups raising claims based on the U.S. Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in voting.