GA-02 is a majority African American district.
It is required under VRA, its 52% black.
It was actually 49.5% VAP as drawn in 2011, and I promise you, it is not required under VRA. There was a lot of talk about it being such during reapportionment, but the final outcome was purposefully designed to skid the implicit requirements wrt Gingles. The GOP billed it as being a majority-black district in the run-up to the final version of the map (so they could talk about expanding black districts), but they ultimately drew it in such a way as to maximize its vote-sink potential without permanently guaranteeing its protection.
Additionally - and perhaps in conflict with what my GOP friends under the Gold Dome at the time told me - if a Gingles-complaint majority-black CD were possible here, then the Justice Department would have likely forced the legislature to redo this district during preclearance and make it majority-black VAP: they did not.
Even if it were majority-black CVAP (and despite the VAP number, it might actually be depending on the Latino CVAP percentage), that alone is not a guarantee for protection under VRA (nor is a plurality-black CVAP district automatically disqualified from VRA protections simply because it is not a majority-black district). It is no more required than a Savannah-Augusta-Macon 49% black VAP district that is entirely possible (though not via DRA necessarily).
There's a reason virtually every heavily-black SW GA county has swung immensely to the GOP since the maps were drawn: they're hemorrhaging black population. Among the three most populated/urban centers, 2 of them (Dougherty & Bibb) have lost population since 2010, and Muscogee has grown by a mere 2%. If this district isn't protected under the Voting Rights Act now (and it's not), then it won't be come 2020.
At least my understand is that whether or not it was 50% Black VAP or not in 2010 is not directly relevant as to whether a minority opportunity district is required now under
Bartlett Vs. Strickland (in fact, I am quite sure that it was possible then). Just because it was possible then, presuming it was possible, did not require that the actual minority opportunity district drawn be itself over 50% Black VAP - just that it give minority voters the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice (this can be easily achieved with a strong plurality). Indeed, making the Black VAP too high is racial packing.
Regardless of what districts existed before, the relevant question under Bartlett/Gingles is whether a compact majority black district can be drawn. It can - the district I posted only split even a single county. The VRA has no inherent problem with splitting counties - if you just split even 1 or 2 more counties, it is very easy to make this district several % points more black to the point where there would certainly be a Black VAP majority (by e.g. taking out whites who live near Valdosta or Albany). Thus, a minority opportunity district is required in this area under the criteria laid out in Bartlett (but that minority opportunity district need not itself have an outright Black VAP majority unless that is actually necessary for minority voters to be able to elect the candidate of their choice).
In any case, whether you or anyone agrees or disagrees, if White GA Republicans do seek to eliminate GA-02, it will be very clear what they are doing - taking away the ability of Black voters to elect the candidate of their choice, which they have clearly been succeeding at doing in GA-02 for quite some time now, because White GA Republicans do not want that candidate to get elected, and instead want to elect someone who is the choice of White voters in South GA. If they do this, it will most definitely be challenged in court. I would agree the outcome of such lawsuits is unclear - but not because there is any real merit to the argument that it is permissible to strip Blacks in South GA of their voting rights, but rather because John Roberts (and I presume Kavanaugh) is a hack who doesn't care about minority voting rights and is willing to change the law to suppress black voters for partisan purposes.
As an aside from what is legally required under previous precedent, personally I would say that it is ludicrous/outdated to only look at black vs white population, and ignore all other non-whites. In most other states, lots of different groups of non-whites live in the same area. If one takes literally the argument that - regardless of how many other minorities live in the area - it must be possible to draw a district with a majority of only a single minority group in order for a minority opportunity district to be required, that would imply that districts like TX-30 and TX-18 could be dismantled solely because there are lots of Hispanics (and Asians) there mixed in with the blacks as well as whites. This would be a clear perversion of the purpose and intent of the VRA.
But insofar as there is an exception to that being outdated, it is South Georgia (most people there ARE either Black or White). But even in South GA, a substantial and increasing % of the population in the GA-02 example I showed is both non-white and non-black. Keeping the threshold at 50% black regardless of the fact that the Hispanic/other population %s are going up effectively raises the requirement of how large of a majority of blacks relative to whites is needed, which makes little sense.
