Polish American Congress v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 24 July 2002
• Docket Number: No. 02 C 1477.,02 C 1477.
• Citation: 211 F.Supp.2d 1098
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois
• Parties: POLISH AMERICAN CONGRESS, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.

211 F.Supp.2d 1098

POLISH AMERICAN CONGRESS, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.

No. 02 C 1477.

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division.

July 24, 2002.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Gregory E. Kulis, Kathleen Coyne Ropka, Gregory E. Kulis & Associates, Chicago, IL, for plaintiff.

Andrew S. Mine, Lisa Eiserman Fike, City of Chicago, Dept. of Law, Chicago, IL, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

SHADUR, Senior District Judge.

Polish American Congress and seven individuals (collectively "Plaintiffs") bring this action for declaratory and injunctive relief against (1) City of Chicago, (2) Richard F. Mell in his official capacity as Chairman of the Chicago City Council Committee on Committees, Rules and Ethics, (3) Chicago's Board of Election Commissioners and (4) Langdon D. Neal, in his official capacity as Chairman of Chicago's Board of Election Commissioners (for convenience, defendants are collectively referred to as "Chicago," treated as a singular noun).¹ Plaintiffs allege that Chicago's ward redistricting map adopted in December 2001 violates their rights under the First,² Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ("Act," 42 U.S.C. §§ 1973 to 1973p).³

Chicago has filed a motion to dismiss Plaintiffs' entire claim under Fed.R.Civ.P. ("Rule") 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6). For the reasons stated in this memorandum opinion and order, Chicago's motion is granted in part and denied in part.

Applicable Legal Standards

When considering a motion to dismiss, a court must accept all of the complaint's well-pleaded factual allegations as true and draw all reasonable inferences in plaintiff's favor (Johnson v. Rivera, 272 F.3d 519, 520 (7^th Cir.2001)). No claim will be dismissed unless "it is clear that no relief could be granted under any set of facts that could be proved consistent with the allegations" (Hishon v. King & Spalding, 467 U.S. 69, 73, 104 S.Ct. 2229, 81 L.Ed.2d 59 (1984), quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957)).

When as here a Rule 12(b)(1) motion challenges the substance (and not the sufficiency) of a complaint's jurisdictional allegations, the court may entertain affidavits and other competent evidence, weighing any conflicts (Capitol Leasing Co. v. FDIC, 999 F.2d 188, 191 (7th Cir.1993) (per curiam)). In that respect plaintiffs have the burden of supporting their jurisdictional assertions by competent proof. By contrast, a Rule 12(b)(6) motion restricts the parties and court to the contents of the complaint itself.⁴

Facts

Every ten years the United States Census Bureau conducts a national census. Under Illinois law the Chicago City Council is authorized to redistrict Chicago's 50 wards⁵ by ordinance one year after each census (65 ILCS 20/21-22).

In late 2001 the City Council began to consider ward redistricting plans based on the results of the 2000 census. On November 28 it announced a proposed redistricting map that incorporated suggestions made by members of the Council's African-American and Latino caucuses (¶¶ 22-23). Members of those caucuses were primarily motivated to maximize the number of Chicago's majority-minority wards (¶ 23). That proposed map did not take into account census information about voting age population or ancestry, because those figures were not yet available (¶ 24).⁶ At a December 14 public hearing three different citizen groups—including a Polish ethnic coalition—presented alternative redistricting plans, none of which was seriously considered by Chicago (¶ 25). On December 19 the City Council adopted new ward redistricting ordinances based on the November 28 map (¶ 26).

This action concerns northwest Chicago's 30th Ward, which under the redistricting ordinance surrounds the 31st Ward on three sides and at points is as narrow as two city blocks (¶¶ 28, 32). Year 2000 census figures show the population of northwest Chicago to be 55% Latino, while at the time of the 1990 census that area was also home to 184,614 people (but see n. 6) of single and multiple Polish ancestry (¶ 29).⁷ Many members of the Polish ethnic community do not speak, or have a limited understanding of, the English language (¶ 35).

Polish American Congress is a not-for-profit corporation that represents the interests of Polish-Americans by promoting civic, educational and cultural programs (¶ 5). Each of the seven individual plaintiffs is a registered voter who either previously resided or now resides in the 30th Ward (¶¶ 6-12). Six of the seven individuals are of Polish or combined Polish-German ethnicity (id.). In addition, plaintiff Michael Wojcik ("Wojcik") is the current 30^th Ward alderman and sues in both his personal and his official capacity (¶ 12). Plaintiffs claim to represent the Polish community of interest for the purposes of this action (¶ 13).

Plaintiffs oppose the new redistricting map as it relates to the 30th Ward because the new ward boundaries splinter the Polish ethnic community of interest, previously contained in two wards, into four different wards (¶¶ 28, 31). According to Plaintiffs, Chicago designed the new ward boundaries for the sole purpose of creating a Latino majority in the 30^th Ward (¶ 34). That focus on race injures the Polish community of interest by minimizing the representation of that community's needs on the City Council (id.). Other harms inflicted on the community by redistricting include (1) the removal of certain churches and businesses from the 30th Ward, (2) potential cuts to certain ward services (including Polish-language translation) and (3) the difficulty that Wojcik will face in being re-elected and thereby representing the Polish community's interests in the City Council (¶¶ 37-40). Plaintiffs have produced an alternative map establishing boundaries for the 30th Ward that they believe will redress those injuries (¶ 41), and they now request declaratory and injunctive relief.

Jurisdiction

Chicago first argues that this Court has no jurisdiction to hear this action under Rule 12(b)(1) because Plaintiffs lack standing and the claims are unripe. To establish standing, plaintiffs must generally show (1) that they have suffered an injury in fact, (2) that there is a causal connection between that injury and the challenged conduct and (3) that it is likely—as opposed to merely speculative—that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision (Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992)).

But United States v. Hays, 515 U.S. 737, 744-45, 115 S.Ct. 2431, 132 L.Ed.2d 635 (1995) (citation omitted) teaches a variation on that standing requirement that is specific to legislative redistricting challenges based on equal protection principles:

Where a plaintiff resides in a racially gerrymandered district, however, the plaintiff has been denied equal treatment because of the legislature's reliance on racial criteria, and therefore has standing to challenge the legislature's action. Voters in such districts may suffer the special representational harms racial classifications can cause in the voting context. On the other hand, where a plaintiff does not live in such a district, he or she does not suffer those special harms, and any inference that the plaintiff has personally been subjected to a racial classification would not be justified absent specific evidence tending to support that inference. Unless such evidence is present, that plaintiff would be asserting only a generalized grievance against governmental conduct of which he or she does not approve.

In literal terms that means that every voter in a racially gerrymandered district has suffered an injury in fact because the use of racial criteria in structuring the district has impermissibly skewed the political process. All voters are entitled instead to have the forces of political competition operate independently of an artificially-created and racially-based distortion of a district's makeup. That being true, it must be recognized (as neither Plaintiffs nor Chicago appear to realize) that Plaintiffs' Polish ethnicity is really irrelevant to the issue of their standing to challenge the redistricting.⁸

That being said, this opinion turns to the standing question in light of Hays. That decision calls for the application of different tests for standing, depending on where Plaintiffs live. Plaintiffs who reside within the boundaries of the redrawn 30th Ward—in this case Frank Golinski, Robert Kocabinski, Mary Taylor-Hart and Wojcik⁹ ("Resident Plaintiffs")—have standing if their pleading adequately asserts that the district is "racially gerrymandered." And although nothing in the parties' submissions contains specific information on this score, it would seem certain that at least some of Polish American Congress' members live in that redrawn ward—so its representative standing vel non depends on the same analysis.

Determining whether a legislative district has been racially gerrymandered— that is, whether its boundaries have been set with a primary purpose of distinguishing between voters on the basis of race— can be difficult (Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 646, 113 S.Ct. 2816, 125 L.Ed.2d 511 (1993)). At this stage the Resident Plaintiffs and Polish American Congress need only to have included well-pleaded allegations from which it may reasonably be inferred that the 30th Ward boundaries "rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to separate voters into different districts on the basis of race, and that the separation lacks sufficient justification" (id. at 649, 113 S.Ct. 2816). To that end the Complaint includes allegations:

1. that the redistricting map adopted by Chicago was based on maps drawn up by the African-America and Latino caucuses in the City Council, and that those caucuses were "primarily motivated to maximize the number of majority-minority wards in the City" (¶ 23);

2. that the...