Because Illinois Democrats “unabashedly” sought to maximize their political stranglehold on Illinois state government, they did not need to also maximize the number of majority Latino and Black legislative districts when they redrew Illinois’ state legislative district maps this summer, a panel of federal judges have ruled.
On Dec. 30, the panel of three judges, assembled from federal courts in Chicago and Indiana, handed Democrats the win over the objections of Republicans, and also Latino and Black advocacy groups, who had asserted the Democratic maps violated the voting rights of racial minorities in Illinois.
The stakes of the fight were high, potentially including control of the Illinois legislative mapmaking process. Control of that process is considered by many to be key to deciding whether Democrats can maintain or even increase their supermajority in the Illinois General Assembly, beginning in the November 2022 elections.
From left: U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow Jr., U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Michael B. Brennan, and U.S. District Judge Jon E. DeGuilio
| ChicagoBar.org; OpenJurist.org
And the Democrats, said the judges, openly and admittedly drew the maps as they did, not to intentionally discriminate against Black and Latino voters, but simply to seek to maximize their already massive majority in Springfield, a goal the judges said is beyond the courts’ jurisdiction to address.
“We recognize that partisan gerrymanders are controversial,” the judges wrote in their decision. “Critics maintain that they distort our democracy, noting that at its most extreme, ‘the practice amounts to ‘rigging elections.’”
The judges noted the Democrat-controlled Illinois Supreme Court in 2016 all but closed off the possibility of amending the state constitution to reform the process, when the court shot down a citizen-led initiative, that had garnered more than 500,000 signatures, to give Illinoisans the chance to vote on the question.
Nonetheless, the judges said, Illinois voters should not look to federal courts for relief from such tactics by the state’s Democratic lawmakers.
“These are matters for the people of Illinois to continue debating. Levers other than federal courts are available to them, whether they are state statutes, state constitutions, and even entreaties to Congress, if they wish to change the current process,” the judges said.
Judges delivering the decision included Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Michael B. Brennan; U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois; and U.S. District Judge Jon E. DeGuilio, of the Northern District of Indiana.
Brennan was appointed by former President Donald Trump. Dow was appointed by former President George W. Bush. And DeGuilio was appointed by former President Barack Obama.
The court fight over the maps had continued since this summer, when Illinois Democrats, led by House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch and State Sen. President Don Harmon, first attempted to enact a new district map, as is required by the state constitution every 10 years.
Democrats approved an initial version of the maps in June, even though official U.S. Census data was not yet available. Democrats indicated those maps were approved at that time using their best guess concerning how to divide the population, in a political maneuver to block Illinois Republicans from using a tactic under the state constitution to wrest control of the mapmaking process.
Those June maps were immediately challenged by Republican lawmakers and advocacy groups for Illinois’ Latino and Black voters. They asserted the maps improperly relied on population estimates, resulting in discriminatory and unbalanced districts.
After Census data revealed Republicans and Black and Latino objectors were correct, Democrats tried again, passing new maps quickly at the end of August, with little input from the public. The maps were signed in September by Gov. JB Pritzker, also a Democrat.
The challengers, however, argued the new maps continued to violate the federal Voting Rights Act. They said Democrats drew the maps merely for partisan political advantage, at the expense of the voting power of minorities, and Latinos, in particular.
A third lawsuit, led by the NAACP, particularly took issue with the Democrats’ decision to protect two white incumbents in the Metro East region, at the expense of a majority Black district in East St. Louis.
The challengers argued Democrats had shifted significant populations of Black and Latino voters into districts with large white populations, in an attempt to win even more Democratic seats or to protect white Democratic incumbents against possible Latino or Black challengers.
Judges threw out the June maps, declaring them to be unconstitutionally imbalanced, due to their reliance on the population estimates. They also invited the challengers to submit proposed maps of their own, to address what they believed to be the shortcomings in the Democratic map.
Under the submitted “remedial map”, the number of House and Senate districts with majority Latino populations would have increased from six in the Democratic map, to 16.
It would also create a new majority Black district centered on East St. Louis.
The Democratic legal team has been led by attorney Michael Kasper, a longtime associate of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. Kasper also represented Madigan loyalists who successfully persuaded the Illinois Supreme Court to shoot down the proposed state constitutional amendment reforming the redistricting process.
Before the federal judges, Kasper and his fellow Democrats argued racism no longer drives voting patterns in Illinois, so white voters – and white Democrats, in particular – can be counted on to elect Black and Latino lawmakers.
They argued Black and Latino voters should no longer need the protection of majority minority districts to leverage their collective political power and advance their interests in Springfield.
Judges sided with Democrats on those questions.
While agreeing that Democrats could have drawn more districts that were majority minority – and particularly, Latino, to reflect the large Latino population growth in the state in the past 10 years – the judges said Democrats are not required to do so, to satisfy federal law.
Rather, the judges said, it was enough for Democrats to draw districts in growing Latino areas, such as in west suburban Aurora, or in areas of the state with relatively large Black populations, that could give those racial minority communities the opportunity build coalitions with enough white voters to elect Latino or Black state lawmakers.
These cases “are not about ‘the chance for some electoral success in place of none.’ Rather, for many of the challenged districts, these cases are about ‘the chance for more success in place of some,’” the judges said.
“… The record also shows that even if race was a factor in the drawing of at least some of these districts, it was not the predominant factor as to any single district,” the judges wrote.
“Instead, the voluminous evidence submitted by the parties overwhelmingly establishes that the Illinois mapmakers were motivated principally by partisan political considerations.”
In response, attorneys from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Foundation (MALDEF) who represented the Latino challengers, said the judges "reached conclusions about the extent of crossover voting by non-Latinos to support Latino-supported candidates that are not accurate under the law."
MALDEF staff attorney Ernest Herrera said the decision means Latinos will remain "underrepresented in the General Assembly" and it "signals to the Latinos of Illinois that they remain significantly dependent on the purported munificence of" the Democratic Party.
Democratic leaders said the decision "recognized and affirmed our efforts to ensure all communities across Illinois receive equal representation."
Illinois Senate Republican Leader Dan McConchie, R-Hawthorn Woods, called the ruling a “disappointment.”
But he particularly singled out Gov. Pritzker for criticism, accusing Pritzker of breaking promises made to Illinois voters when he ran for election in 2018 that he would reject any map drawn by politicians or their allies.
“Gov. Pritzker and his Democratic allies have made their allegiance clear,” McConchie said in the prepared statement.
“They are more committed to protecting the same political insiders who have been wrecking our state for decades than defending voting rights in Illinois.”
Republicans have been represented in the action by attorneys Julie A. Bauer and Nathan R. Gilbert, of Winston & Strawn LLP, of Chicago. They have also been represented by attorneys Phillip A. Luetkehans and Brian J. Armstrong, of the firm of Luetkehans Brady Garner & Armstrong, of Itasca; Charles E. Harris II, Mitchell D. Holzrichter, Thomas V. Panoff, Christopher S. Comstock, Heather A. Weiner, Christopher A. Knight and Joseph D. Blackhurst, of Mayer Brown LLP, of Chicago; and John G. Fogarty, of Clark Hill PLC, of Chicago.
Latino challengers were represented by attorneys Griselda Vega Samuel, Francisco Fernandez del Castillo, Thomas A. Saenz, Ernest Herrera and Denise Hulett, of MALDEF, of Chicago and Los Angeles.
The NAACP was represented by attorneys Aneel L. Chablani, Ami Gandhi and Clifford Helm, of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, and attorneys Jon M. Greenbaum, Ezra D. Rosenberg, James T. Tucker and Ryan R.T. Snow, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, of Washington, D.C.
The Democratic lawmakers were represented by Kasper; attorneys Elizabeth H. Yandell, Colleen C. Smith and Sean Berkowitz, of the firm of Latham & Watkins; Adam R. Vaught, of Hinshaw & Culbertson, of Chicago; Heather Wier Vaught, of La Grange; and Devon C. Bruce, of the Power Rogers firm, of Chicago.