Appeals court says Georgia may elect utility panel statewide, rejecting a ruling for district voting

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

57% : It also could signal limits to a new wave of voting rights litigation after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a key part of the law this year in an Alabama case.
51% : Commissioners are required to live in particular districts under state law, but run statewide.
48% : "On the facts of this case, we conclude that plaintiffs' novel remedial request fails because Georgia's chosen form of government for the PSC is afforded protection by federalism and our precedents.
44% : The appeals court said the lawsuit must fail because the plaintiffs hadn't proposed a plan to remedy discrimination while maintaining a statewide election system, saying courts can't impose a new form of government as part of a Voting Rights Act remedy.
44% : "If each commissioner represented only a district, then important questions of utility regulation -- such as the location of energy and infrastructure -- could turn into a zero-sum game between commissioners beholden to their districts instead of a collaborative effort to reach the best result for the entire state," the court wrote.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.