“By intentionally distorting district boundaries along racial lines to preserve a specific number of Hispanic majority districts and two Black influence districts, California violated the Fifteenth Amendment and Voting Rights Act,” the lawsuit says.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation has filed a lawsuit challenging California’s Proposition 50, a voter-approved change to the state’s congressional map.
Proposition 50 was approved earlier this year. Before its passage, state Gov. Gavin Newsom explicitly said that the proposed congressional maps were intended to favor Democratic candidates—an unusually overt example of gerrymandering, done in response to Texas’s decision to redraw its own boundaries.
In court documents, the Public Interest Legal Foundation claims that, if enforced, Proposition 50 would violate the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution as well as the federal Voting Rights Act. Attorneys claim that the state used factors like race when designing its congressional map, a violation of federal law.
“The Voting Rights Act forbids enforcing election procedures enacted with a racial intent or that results in a denial, or abridgment, of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote, on account of race. 52 U.S.C. § 10101(a),” the lawsuit says. “Outside the context of a remedial map under the Voting Rights Act, drawing district lines to preserve specific racial percentages, maintain racial majorities, or the deliberate preservation of racial influence districts violates the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.”
“By intentionally distorting district boundaries along racial lines to preserve a specific number of Hispanic majority districts and two Black influence districts, California violated the Fifteenth Amendment and Voting Rights Act,” the lawsuit says.
The U.S. Department of Justice is litigating a similar claim against California. In November, the agency sued Gov. Newsom and California Secretary of State Sirley Weber, saying that the gerrymandered maps violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
“The race-based gerrymandered maps passed by the California legislature are unlawful and unconstitutional,” First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said in a press release. “The U.S. Department of Justice is moving swiftly to prevent these illegal maps from tainting our upcoming elections. California is free to draw congressional maps, but they may not be drawn based on race.”
Democracy Docket notes that PILF’s lawsuit is somewhat more ambitious than the Justice Department’s claim. In citing the 15th Amendment, the Public Interest Legal Foundation is arguing that race should never be considered in the drawing of electoral maps, even when redistricting is designed to remove obstacles to representation rather than enact them.
“Proposition 50 places Plaintiffs in racially engineered districts. It is a deliberately racially engineered outcome,” the lawsuit alleges. “This enables the Black populations in Districts 43 and 37 to effectively politically control the district despite lacking any majority or plurality in the census data. By intentionally walling off surrounding Hispanic and White racial populations, California deliberately and illegally created two Black influence districts.”
Sources
Right-Wing Legal Group Sues to Block California’s Voter-Approved Congressional Map
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