Sixteen residents from three counties in Kansas have filed a legal challenge to the state’s newly drawn congressional districts maps, which the Republican-led state legislature passed earlier this month.
Numerous voting rights organizations exist have joined the lawsuitThe American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU of Kansas) and Campaign Legal Center are all parties to the challenge. A separate challenge to the maps was filed by Democracy Docket, a national organization headed by Marc Elias (Democratic voting rights lawyer) and Loud Light, a state-based civics engagement organization that aims at empowering young voters
The lawsuits claim that the new maps were inaccurate. were designed with the specific goal of increasing Republican representation — and with the aim of defeating the only Democratic member of Congress, Rep. Sharice Davids, by making her district more difficult to win in the 2022 midterm election.
ACLU claims the new map is an “extreme and intentional” political gerrymanderThis dilutes the representation of other-white communities.
For example, the map splits Wyandotte County, placing a large portion of the county’s Black and Latinx communities into a rural and majority-white district nearby. The new map also dilutes Lawrence County’s progressive- and libertarian-leaning voters. It places the county within state borders with the 1st Congressional District. This district is also more rural-oriented and conservative.
“The Enacted Plan was deliberately designed to consistently and efficiently elect exclusively Republicans to Congress, and specifically to prevent Democratic voters in the Kansas City Metro Area from electing their preferred candidate, currently Congresswoman Sharice Davids,” the ACLU lawsuit states. “Republican legislative leaders didn’t even try to hide it.”
“The people in the Kansas City metropolitan area have a real need and desire to elect representatives that are going to represent their interests in Congress,” said Sharon BrettSeparate statement by, the legal Director of the ACLU of Kansas. “What this map does is basically run roughshod over those interests and over those desires and does so for political gain.”
Notably, the lawsuits are within the state judicial system rather than the federal one, the first time a challenge to Kansas’s congressional maps has been made in that arena. It’s possible that this choice was made on account of a 2019 Supreme Court decision that ruled federal courts can’t strike down maps based on political gerrymandering, as well as a more recent Supreme Court decision that left Alabama maps that are racially biasedIn place
The challenges to the maps hope to use the Equal Rights and Political Power clauses of the state’s constitution to provide a basis for why the maps should be struck down. The lawsuits demand that the state courts require the Republican legislature draw a new map that is compliant, or have the courts draw them.
These maps were approved earlier in the month. defeating a veto from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who tried to stop them from being implemented after describing the maps as being “really bad for Kansas.”
The congressional map “separates real communities of interests, in ways that disenfranchise select groups,” Kelly said. “There’s no doubt that the way Wyandotte County was cut in half, in this map, that will not disenfranchise our communities of color.”
