Georgia just obliterated Lucy McBath’s district. She says she’s not going anywhere.

Democratic-backed groups have vowed to challenge the new map in court again.

Georgia Republicans just shredded Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath’s suburban Atlanta district — but she says she will fight to remain in Congress.

The Republican-controlled state Legislature on Thursday passed a new congressional map that increases the number of majority-Black districts in the state after a federal judge found that Georgia’s previous lines violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters.

The map, however, maintains the same likely partisan split as before: Nine seats Republicans are strongly favored to hold, and five for Democrats. It increases the number of majority-Black districts by effectively erasing the district held by McBath, a prominent Black lawmaker whose district is known as a “coalition” district, where Black, Latino and Asian voters make up a majority.

Democratic-backed groups have vowed to challenge the new map in court again, meaning it’s possible the lines passed Thursday aren’t ultimately used for next year’s elections. But at least for now, McBath’s district is gone.

But she says she isn’t going anywhere.

“I intend to come back to Washington,” McBath told POLITICO on Tuesday, just after the state Senate passed the new map.

The state House subsequently passed the map Thursday, sending it to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who is expected to sign it into law before a court-imposed Friday deadline. Georgia Republicans also passed state legislative maps that add a few majority-Black districts while guaranteeing GOP control there as well.

Georgia will now have four congressional districts where Black residents make up a majority of the voting-age population, along with a district just below that 50 percent mark. All five are Democratic-leaning.

The previous map also had five majority-minority — and Democratic — districts: Two majority-Black districts, two just below 50 percent and McBath’s 7th District — a district with no single racial or ethnic majority but a majority-minority coalition of Black, Latino and Asian voters.

McBath’s district to Atlanta’s northeast is effectively divvied up among four districts in the new map, with a new majority-Black district created to the city’s west. Both the old and new maps have nine majority-white districts; they are all currently held by Republicans, and the GOP is almost certain to keep them after next year’s elections.

The state’s filing deadline won’t be until March, so candidates do not have to file immediately to run. But most assume that, should these maps stand, McBath would run in the newly created 6th District, which would be an entirely new constituency for her.

“My focus and my direction will not change. We will serve any constituents I am given, in the same way we always have: putting their needs first,” McBath said.

Even with a new set of constituents, McBath — an anti-gun violence activist who first entered Congress as part of the 2018 Democratic wave — would still be a powerhouse.

McBath has broad name ID and is regularly floated as a potential statewide candidate, including for the open 2026 gubernatorial race, and she is a prolific fundraiser. McBath would also likely have broad support across the Democratic Party. She has been fundraising off the new maps — including sending joint emails with the state party.

The redrawing of the congressional lines also affects other incumbents. Most notably GOP Rep. Rich McCormick, who currently represents the 6th District. He is expected to run in the new 7th District — which shares a core with his current district, while shedding some Democratic-leaning areas around Atlanta. He has also said he would run no matter what the maps look like.

Democrats have already signaled they will look to challenge the new maps in court. “The Republican-proposed congressional map is yet another attempt to defy federal district court orders enforcing Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act at the expense of Georgia’s voters,” Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement earlier this week. The group is involved in several of the lawsuits challenging congressional and legislative lines in the Peach State.

Democrats will likely focus on the destruction of McBath’s majority-minority district.

When federal District Court Judge Steve C. Jones, an appointee of President Barack Obama, declared that the maps violated the Voting Rights Act, he wrote in his order that Georgia should add an “an additional majority-Black congressional district in the west-metro Atlanta.”

Democrats contend that order can’t be addressed by shuffling around the current districts, since Jones wrote that Georgia “cannot remedy the Section 2 violations described herein by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere.”

Republicans counter that erasing McBath’s old majority-minority district doesn’t violate that order because Jones did not mean to protect coalition districts in which no group makes up a majority.

“Districts composed of less than a majority of a single minority group are not ‘opportunity districts’ protected by the Voting Rights Act,” the National Republican Redistricting Trust said in a statement posted to X, which is formerly known as Twitter. “Despite Democrats' best efforts to the contrary, the VRA is not a vehicle for maximizing partisan political power and never has been.”

The 11th Circuit, which covers Georgia, ruled in a 1990 case out of Florida that the Voting Rights Act does protect coalition districts in some situations. But the U.S. Supreme Court has not weighed in. And an ongoing case out of Galveston, Texas, in the 5th Circuit — on which many legal watchers expect the Supreme Court may eventually weigh in — is also challenging the idea that the Voting Rights Act protects such districts.

On Wednesday, Jones said challengers have until Dec. 12 to formally enter their objections to the new maps, with a hearing scheduled for Dec. 20.

Should this new map be tossed out, a court-appointed special master would be appointed to draw new lines. Georgia Republicans would almost certainly appeal any court-drawn lines and have already appealed Jones’ earlier decision overturning the original maps.