Comm. for A Fair & Balanced Map v. Ill. State Bd. of Elections
| Decision Date | 15 December 2011 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 1:11–CV–5065. |
| Citation | 835 F.Supp.2d 563 |
| Parties | COMMITTEE FOR A FAIR AND BALANCED MAP, et al., Plaintiffs v. ILLINOIS STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
John Albert Janicik, Chad Matthew Clamage, Dana S. Douglas, Emily M. Emerson, Joshua D. Yount, Michael David Frisch, Mitchell Douglas Holzrichter, Thomas Vangel Panoff, Tyrone C. Fahner, Lori E. Lightfoot, Mayer Brown LLP, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs.
Devon C. Bruce, Larry R. Rogers, Powers, Rogers & Smith, Barbara Carroll Delano, Brent Douglas Stratton, Carl Thomas Bergetz, Jennifer Marie Zlotow, Jonathan A. Rosenblatt, Malini Rao, Paul Joseph Gaynor, Office of the Illinois Attorney General, Michael James Kasper, Fletcher Topol & O'Brien, Chicago, IL, for Defendants.
OPINION AND ORDER
This case involves a challenge to the congressional redistricting plan adopted by the State of Illinois after the 2010 Census. The plaintiffs are an organization called the Committee for a Fair and Balanced Map (a not-for-profit organization created by Illinois citizens concerned about the congressional redistricting process in Illinois), ten incumbent Republican members of Congress, and six registered voters (including some who identify themselves as Latino voters and others who assert that they are Republican voters), collectively referred to as “the Committee.” The defendants are the Illinois State Board of Elections (the agency charged with implementingthe results of the redistricting process) and its members, collectively referred to as “the Board of Elections.” The United States Constitution requires Illinois lawmakers to redraw the state's congressional district boundaries after each decennial census. U.S. Const. art. I, § 2; id.amend. XIV, §§ 1 & 2; id. amend. XV; Ryan v. State Bd. of Elections of State of Ill., 661 F.2d 1130, 1132 (7th Cir.1981). Pursuant to this authority, the Democratic majority in the Illinois General Assembly drafted, debated,1 and passed the Illinois Congressional Redistricting Act of 2011 (the “Redistricting Act”) (P.A. 97–14), thereby creating what we refer to as “the Adopted Map.” Based on the 2010 Census results, the State of Illinois lost one congressional seat. The Adopted Map, therefore, eliminates one seat and establishes boundaries for the state's eighteen remaining congressional districts.
The Committee contends that the Adopted Map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973(a) (Count I), the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and rights protected by the Fifteenth Amendment, because Congressional Districts 3, 4, and 5 as drawn intentionally dilute the Latino vote (Counts II and III). They also allege violation of the Equal Protection Clause in that Latino ethnicity was the predominant consideration in drawing Adopted District 4 and as such, is an intentional and unjustified racial gerrymander (Count IV). Taking another tack, the Committee alleges that Adopted Districts 11, 13 and 17 demonstrate a blatant partisan gerrymander against Republican voters in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments (Counts V and VI).
We held a two-day trial on the Committee's motion for permanent injunction and, after examining the parties' briefs and extensive documentary and testimonial evidence, including the expert reports and testimony, we find in favor of the Board of Elections. As to the partisan gerrymander claims, although we agree with the Committee that the crafting of the Adopted Map was a blatant political move to increase the number of Democratic congressional seats, ultimately we conclude that the Committee failed to present a workable standard by which to evaluate such claims, therefore they fail under Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267, 124 S.Ct. 1769, 158 L.Ed.2d 546 (2004). The Committee's vote dilution claims fail because the Committee has not proven by a preponderance of the evidence that the state legislature intentionally discriminated against Latinos in passing the Adopted Map. Again, we acknowledge that Latino ethnicity was a factor in creating District 4 in 1991, but times have changed: the weight of the evidence shows that the predominant intent of the 2011 Illinois legislature in maintaining Adopted District 4 in substantially the same shape as when it was created in 1991 was a desire to enhance Democratic seats in the state as a whole, to keep Democratic incumbents in Districts 3, 4, and 5 with their constituents, to preserve existing district boundaries, and to maintain communities of interest. Because race was not the predominant factor, the Committee failed to meet its burden of proof on its racial gerrymander claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act or the Constitution.
The Committee's racial vote dilution and gerrymandering claims concern Adopted Districts 3, 4 and 5, and its political gerrymandering claims concern Adopted Districts 11, 13, and 17. We set forth the facts below to provide an overview as necessary to understand the bases of those claims.
This litigation focuses primarily on District 4 in the Adopted Map, so we begin with the history of District 4. Following the 1990 Census, Illinois lost a congressional seat and the Illinois General Assembly was required to draw new district boundaries for the state. When the General Assembly failed to undertake its constitutional obligation to draw a new map, the court in Hastert v. State Bd. of Elections, 777 F.Supp. 634, 637 (N.D.Ill.1991), was called upon to devise one. Hispanic voters also sought the creation of a Latino majority congressional district under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Both parties agreed that, given population and demographic changes within the City of Chicago, a Latino majority district was mandated by Section 2. See id. at 640.
The goal of the litigants was to create a new Latino majority district while maintaining the three African–American majority districts, Districts 1, 2, and 7. The result was a bizarre configuration of District 4. Id. at 648 n. 24. The court explained that “the Chicago Hispanic community resides principally in two dense enclaves, one on Chicago's near northwest side and one on the near southwest side.” Id. District 7, one of the African–American majority-minority districts, runs “roughly in an east-west direction along Chicago's central latitudes from Lake Michigan to the western suburbs,” and separates the two Hispanic enclaves. Id. The parties' proposed plans in that case both connected the “northwest and southwest side Hispanic enclaves by running a narrow corridor around the western end of [District 7], creating a C-shaped configuration.” Id. The western portion of the proposed plans, specifically, the part west of Central Avenue connecting the northwest and southwest enclaves is referred to as the “connector arm.” Both proposed maps shot out rays from the northwest and southwest enclaves to capture additional Latino population. Id. The court commented that “[f]ew districts have quite so an extraordinary appearance.” Id.
The court found that “the Chicago/Cook County Hispanic community [was] ‘sufficiently large and geographically compact’ to constitute a single district majority.” Id. at 649 (citation omitted). It noted that the two Latino enclaves are less than one mile apart at their closest point and that this separation resulted from exogenous physical and institutional barriers, and thus did not indicate the existence of two distinct communities. Id. & n. 25. The court further found that the Latino community was politically cohesive and that voting in the area was racially polarized. Id. at 650. The racially polarized voting, the court found, “thwarted the political interests of the Hispanic community.” Id. The court reasoned that “[t]he location of the Chicago Hispanic community in two highly concentrated enclaves on either side of [District 7] on Chicago's near northwest and near southwest sides necessarily requires an odd configuration to accommodate the creation of an Hispanic district and the three super-majority African–American districts dictated under the Voting Rights Act.” Id. at 650. After considering the totality of circumstances, the court concluded that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act mandated a majority-minority Latino district and ultimately adopted the Hastert plan, thereby creating the C-shaped District 4, a district that had 59.18 percent of the Latino voting age population.2Id. at 648–50.
In 1996, the court was asked to reexamine whether District 4 violated the constitution,inter alia, in light of Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 113 S.Ct. 2816, 125 L.Ed.2d 511 (1993)( Shaw I ) and Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 115 S.Ct. 2475, 132 L.Ed.2d 762 (1995), see King v. State Bd. of Elections, 979 F.Supp. 582, 586 (N.D.Ill.1996)( King I ), which recognize an equal protection claim based on segregating voters in separate districts based on race. King I addressed “whether in attempting to remedy a Section 2 Voting Rights Act violation, the Hastert court adopted a redistricting plan that apportioned the electorate on the basis of race and ethnicity in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.” Id. at 599.
The King I court found that racial considerations predominated in the creation of District 4. Id. at 605. Indeed, the parties had agreed (in Hastert ) that a Hispanic majority district was mandated and had agreed to the proposed configuration of District 4; thus, the “district's bizarre shape was effectively determined by the litigants and not the court.” Id. at 606 (emphasis in original). The court added that District 4's “extremely irregular configuration create[d] a strong inference ... that its shape rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to separate voters into...
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