Following the cascade of Supreme Court decisions, stripping away federally protected rights from bodily autonomy to proving one’s innocence, a group of Black voters from Georgia took a Voting Rights Act case all the way to SCOTUS and won. 

“I was stunned,” Brionté McCorkle said, upon hearing the judge ruled in favor of her and fellow plaintiffs in Rose et al v. Raffenspberger,  the path to which she calls a “rollercoaster.” 

But not only were the legal proceedings bumpy, they were messy- tangential to a suspect legislative backdrop, SB 472, providing for Public Service Commission district maps, which text messages later revealed were allegedly gerrymandered for commissioners’ private and political gain- and largely took place without the public’s awareness of what was at stake for them, both economically and environmentally. 

Rose v. Raffensperger centered around the at-large method of electing the Public Service Commission- the body of five elected officials whose regulation of Georgia Power, provided for in the state constitution, has allowed the electrical provider to exist as a regulated monopoly since 1973. 

Although each PSC commissioner is designated their own district, they are elected to serve six-year terms in state-wide, staggered elections. The plaintiffs in Rose v. Raffenspberger alleged that particularly in District 3, where they reside, the at-large elections diluted the Black vote, which is prohibited under Section Two of the Voting Rights Act. 

While VRA claims are required to be brought by individuals, McCorkle remarks on the collective strength brought to the case by plaintiffs Richard Rose, president of NAACP’s Atlanta Chapter, Wanda Mosley, national field director of Black Voters Matter fund, James Woodall, former President of the Georgia NAACP and by McCorkle herself, who is the Executive Director of Georgia Conservation Voters, as a result of their advocacy work, apart from being impacted themselves. 

“No matter what issue you’re working on in the community, people are going to be stressed about high bills. One issue that nobody can avoid is the power bill. No matter [the advocacy field], the strain of people getting enough money to have the basics to live life is always brought up- just enough money to get food, just enough money to pay the rent, just enough money to keep the lights on. . . this is what people are saying- especially in lower income communities, and in communities of color.

I knew there were a lot of people listening to this [asking themselves], ‘How do we help? How do we get people the relief that they need?’”

McCorkle recalls the moment where she fully realized how “disconnected” the PSC commissioners were at a rate case hearing, the second of two sets of hearings over which the PSC presides every three years, and during which the rates on Georgia Power bills are determined. The rate case hearings directly follow hearings for the Integrated Resource Plan, or IRP, during which the sources for Georgia Power’s energy are decided, and thereby Georgia Power’s environmental impact.  

The rate case hearing wherein McCorkle understood the PSC to be out of touch with their constituents, the commissioners were diminishing rate increases, likening them to purchasing an extra cup of coffee per month.

“I remember being low income enough that five dollars to get one gallon of gas was like a triumph,” McCorkle says.

She remembers thinking of the PSC, “‘Are y’all so far removed from this reality [in which] not just a handful of people, a lot of people live?!’ This isn’t just the price of a cup of coffee.

Maybe for one bill. Then you add up the whole year. Then you also increase this fee, so there’s fifteen dollars on top of that. Then you also add COVID fees on top of this bill- we paid for Georgia Power’s masks and cleaning services during COVID. Their shareholders didn’t pay for it.

When you add all of this up, this is more than a cup of coffee now. This is hundreds of thousands of dollars over time. It compounds. It’s also a monthly bill. The charges just keep coming. You can’t not have power anymore.”

McCorkle foresees power bills continuing to skyrocket under the current Public Service Commission, not only because of their history of allowing Georgia Power to pass off costs to residential, rather than industrial or commercial customers, but because she also anticipates the offset customers will likely have to bear, from the $30 billion and climbing nuclear units being constructed at Plant Votgle, for which Georgia Power is the majority owner.

McCorkle’s prediction is not only based on her extensive knowledge of climate and energy issues in Georgia, it also stems from her knowledge of the law, through which the Georgia General Assembly established the legal pathway for Georgia Power customers to pay the company’s construction cost for nuclear reactors, via “construction work in progress fees” charged to their bills.

Plant Votgle’s construction project, the mismanagement and cost overruns of which have been widely documented, has its own upcoming PSC hearings entirely separate from the rate case and IRP, which McCorkle says couldl provide Georgia Power the opportunity to charge customers even more.

“People are already complaining on social media,” McCorkle says, “Reddit, Next Door, Instagram. ‘My Georgia Power bill is 200 dollars this month!’ Well guess what? That’s just the cost they’ve already approved on your bill. Wait ‘til the ones that they’re considering just over the next couple of months.”

As cost prohibitive power bills increased under the PSC’s watch, so did the environmental devastation caused by Georgia Power’s nuclear and coal plants- the impacts of both hitting Black Georgians hardest. 

“Plant Shearer is one of the nation’s largest carbon emitting coal plants,” McCorkle says, “It’s north of Macon- Macon’s population is about 70 percent African American. Votgle is in Augusta- Augusta also has a very large African American population, and that particular county has tons of cancers directly related to all the nuclear activity going on in that community.”

Beginning in 2013, when MccCorkle was introduced to the PSC through her work for the Sierra Club, she and other advocates engaged in many discussions over the years regarding the PSC’s systemic failures- primarily by the white men who have helmed the commission for over a century- and how the at-large election method left commissioners unaccountable to constituents within their districts, particularly to people of color in urban areas who make up the bulk of Georgia Power customers.

However, McCorkle was unaware that the election method enabling this neglect was potentially illegal, until a lawyer informed her that, from his perspective, the circumstances amounted to a fairly straightforward Voting Rights Act case, for the violation of Section Two, which prohibits racially discriminatory voting practices.

After two years of McCorkle telling and re-telling the courts about her own lived experience, as well as those of other Black community members for whom she has spent years advocating, in addition to having to repeatedly endure state attorneys’ attempts to negate her authority as mere opinion, a Northern District judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, agreeing that Black voters had been denied the opportunity to elect a Public Service Commissioner of their choice, had suffered as a result, and that PSC elections would no longer take place this November, or at any time until the election method had been sufficiently remedied. 

Ultimately, the court sided with the data and with history. The statistical analysis of PSC election data in District 3, from Dr. Stephen J. Popick, formerly of the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, included in Judge Steven Grimberg’s ruling, was telling.

“In each of the six most recent general and runoff elections for PSC commissioners, Black voters supported the same candidate at a rate greater than 94%. Despite this strong cohesion, the Black preferred candidate lost in all elections despite the Black-preferred candidate going to a runoff in two of those elections. Dr. Popick testified that, in all of his years of experience, his analysis of the PSC elections in Georgia since 2012 ‘is one of the clearest examples of racially polarized voting’ he has ever seen.”

Indeed, Charles “Chuck” Eaton, the commissioner for the plaintiffs’ District 3 from 2006 until leaving for a judgeship position in 2021, would never have been elected in the first place, nor would he have been twice re-elected, had his actual district decided his election. 

Recent candidates for District 3 offered testimony during Rose v. Raffensperger. Eaton’s challenger in the 2018 election, Lindy Miller, testified that commissioners had failed to advocate for Black constituents being made to bear the “energy burden” in Georgia, as well as to the the much larger percentage of  of low-income Black rate payers in Georgia than that of Black rate payers in a higher income bracket. 

Chandra Farley, who lost the Democratic primaries in 2022, testified that “the PSC is regularly provided with information relating to energy equity and has the ability to lessen the energy burden on Black Georgians, but it has failed to do so.”

Miller and Farley’s testimonies are supported by data the District court included in its ruling from America Community Survey and the Census, which found that the poverty rate for white Georgians is 9%, whereas the poverty rate for Black Georgians is 18.8%.   

This data starkly contrasts with the Commissioner’s current President, Tricia Pridemore’s testimony, some of which the court dismissed as “speculative,” including her statement that she “does not believe that Black rate payers have different needs than white rate payers.” 

“It’s not Santa Claus,” McCorkle says, speaking of the systemic racism suffered by Black Georgians at the hands of the PSC.

Following the plaintiffs’ victory in District court on August 5th, the state appealed to the District 11 Court of Appeals, the same court which immediately enforced a six week abortion ban following Dobbs decision, flaunting the customary 28 day waiting-period for appellate decisions to take effect, of its own accord.

This same court reversed the Northern District’s decision, granting Secretary of State Raffensperger the right to keep upcoming PSC elections on the ballot, citing the closeness of the election as its reason for doing so. 

Prior to the ballots being built in mid-August, the plaintiffs filed a request for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the case. 

 “A lot of people ask [SCOTUS] to weigh in,” McCorkle says, “The fact that they took our case as quickly as they did is insane. It was a long shot.”

The plaintiffs’ long shot paid off, with SCOTUS ruling against the appellate decision on August 19th, in just time for this year’s PSC elections to be removed from the ballot. 

At least for this year, the Secretary of State has acquiesced to the SCOTUS decision, but will have the option to pursue another appeal in the future. Should the Secretary of State decide against an appeal, the elections will be in the hands of the legislature to redesign.

McCorkle says speculation exists that SB 472 -which created PSC maps with four districts favorable to Republicans and one favorable to Democrats, instead of maps which would have more accurately represented voter preference, with three districts favorable to Republicans and two favorable to Democrats- was passed in anticipation of the state losing Rose v. Raffensperger. However, due to a questionable e-mail from Commissioner Echols which surfaced during court proceedings, the legislature could redraw the maps rather than face any potential litigation on that matter. 

For now, McCorkle is able to enjoy a historical victory, and to gain distance from two year’s worth of unpaid emotional labor she was made to endure in court. 

“The worst thing is being the girl who called race. The person constantly talking about the boogeyman that is racism. But I know it’s real and I know it hurts people and I know what the impact is on the community- and if it’s illegal, I want to fight, to do what is just and get what is just for the people.”