Next month, the Supreme Court will consider Sue Evenwel’s
bid to change the way state and local governments draw election districts. Demanding that state and local governments
across the nation change the way they draw legislative lines, Evenwel argues
that it is unconstitutional for states to draw districts based on total
population, creating districts of substantially equal numbers of people. Evenwel’s arguments—which fly in the face of
our Constitution’s promise of equal
representation for all—would undermine minority representation both in Texas,
the state Evenwel is suing, and throughout the nation. Recent events in Yakima, Washington, provide
a good example.
The town of Yakima—an agricultural community 140 miles east
of Seattle—is forty percent Hispanic, but, until this year, had never elected a
person of Hispanic origin to the town’s city council. This year, a federal district court held that
Yakima’s at-large system of elections for city council violated the Voting
Rights Act by denying Hispanic voters an equal opportunity to elect their
candidate of choice, and ordered the town to draw single-member districts
composed of substantially equal population.
Earlier this month, in elections
held under these court-ordered boundaries, three
Hispanic candidates won election to office, ending the exclusion of Hispanics from
elected office.
But the town of Yakima is now using every avenue to undo
these historic gains, claiming—as Evenwel does—that the Constitution does not
permit state and local governments to draw districts composed of substantially
equal numbers of people if those districts do not contain approximately the
same number of eligible voters. Yakima
argues that the Hispanic voters’ claim under the Voting Rights Act should be
dismissed because creating single-member districts in order to make it possible
for the Hispanic community to elect its candidate of choice would result in
“severe malapportionment of eligible voters.” Represented by defense counsel in
the Voting Rights Act litigation, Yakima has even gone so far as to file an amicus
brief in the Supreme Court supporting Evenwel’s attack on the principle of
equal representation for equal numbers of people.
As this example illustrates, Evenwel’s far-reaching
arguments, if accepted by the Court, would not only wreak havoc with our democracy,
requiring states to change the way they draw district lines, but it would also
make it harder to draw election boundaries that ensure that racial minorities have
an equal chance to elect representatives of their choice. Evenwel’s argument would undermine the
protections afforded by the Voting Rights Act and take political power away from
urban population centers where racial minorities overwhelmingly live, giving
it to whiter, more rural areas. This is no
accident. Ed Blum—the mastermind behind Evenwel’s
case—wants to stop
states from creating majority-minority districts
that help ensure equal political opportunities for all regardless of race. Denying equal representation to unnaturalized
immigrants, children, and others who lack the franchise won’t alone accomplish
Blum’s goal, but it would make it harder to draw election boundaries that
ensure that minorities have a fair chance at the polls. Among the losers—if Blum succeeds in
eliminating the guarantee of equal representation for equal numbers of
people—will be racial minorities in places like Yakima, who will, once again, find
it harder to have their voices heard.
David Gans is the Director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights and Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center and a co-author of CAC's brief in Evenwel v. Abbott. This post is cross-posted at Text and History.