Kansan voters filed a lawsuit in state court challenging Kansas’ 2022 congressional redistricting plan as a partisan and racial gerrymander that violates the Kansas Constitution. The lawsuit alleges that Kansas violated its own constitution when it enacted a congressional plan that threatens to eliminate the state’s only Democratic congressional seat and its only congressional district in which minority voters can, together with white crossover voters, elect their candidate of choice to Congress. 

The state of Kansas has four members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Tracey Mann, Republican Jacob LaTurner, Republican Ron Estes and Democrat Sharice Davids. This partisan breakdown in Kansas’ congressional delegation — 75% Republican, 25% Democratic — roughly aligns with the state’s political makeup and, if anything, underrepresents Democratic voters. In 2020, Democrats earned over 40% of statewide votes in the presidential, Senate and congressional elections. Kansas also has a Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, who was elected with 48% of the vote, and with a five-point margin, in 2018. 

Nevertheless, at the outset of the 2022 redistricting cycle, Kansas Republicans announced their plan to gerrymander the state’s congressional map to eliminate Davids’ seat. Indeed, then Senate President Susan Wagle promised, “I guarantee you we can draw four Republican congressional maps.” The state made good on this promise during the redistricting process, passing a map that shores up Republican control of the three existing Republican seats and turns Davids’ district, which she has reliably won by 10 points, into a Republican-leaning seat.  

To target Davids’ seat, Kansas Republicans divided the Kansas City metro area into two congressional districts, cracking the power of the area’s Democratic voting bloc in an effort to dilute their voting strength. This splits a widely recognized community of interest into separate congressional districts for the first time in 40 years — a result federal courts have forbidden for the last four decades. It also rejects the will of Kansas voters, whose testimony to the Senate and House Committees on Redistricting overwhelmingly supported preserving Kansas City in a single congressional district.  

Not only is the map drawn for partisan gain, it also dilutes the voting strength of minority voters, preventing them from electing their preferred candidate, currently Sharice Davids, a Native American woman. The map splits Wyandotte County — the state’s only majority-minority county — in two, cracking a congressional district in which minority voters, with white crossover voters, can currently elect their candidate of choice, and instead dividing them into two districts in which there are too few white crossover voters to elect the minority-preferred candidate. 

The Kansas legislature passed this partisan and racially gerrymandered map through an expedited and opaque process. The House approved the map two weeks after its first committee meeting on redistricting; the Senate passed it even more quickly. The hearings also took place without opportunity for meaningful public input, requiring the public to submit comments without access to the data underlying the map. The map initially passed the legislature in late January, and Gov. Kelly vetoed it a week later. The Republican supermajorities in the House and Senate overrode Gov. Kelly’s veto the following week. Not a single Democrat in either chamber voted in favor of the map, and some Republican legislators defected as well.  

On Feb. 14, 2022, 11 Kansas voters, represented by Campaign Legal Center (CLC), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Kansas and Arnold & Porter, sued, asking a Kansas court in Wyandotte County to invalidate the map as a partisan and racial gerrymander that violates the protections of the Kansas Constitution. Kansas voters of all parties and races deserve an equal opportunity to translate their votes into political representation — and the Kansas Constitution requires it. 

The Spirit Lake Nation (Mni Wakan Oyate), Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and individual voters filed a lawsuit in federal court to challenge North Dakota’s discriminatory state legislative maps. The lawsuit alleges that the state of North Dakota violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) by failing to draw a majority Native legislative district containing the Spirit Lake Reservation and Turtle Mountain Reservation, which would allow citizens of the Tribal Nations to elect a candidate of their choice to two State House seats and a State Senate seat.

Ignoring the requests and testimony of the two tribal chairmen and tribal citizens, the legislature drew the Turtle Mountain Reservation and surrounding trust lands into District 9, while drawing the Spirit Lake Reservation into District 15. The legislature also packed a substantial supermajority of Turtle Mountain citizens into House Subdistrict 9A, which contains the Turtle Mountain Reservation, and cracked the remainder of the Turtle Mountain population into House Subdistrict 9B, which includes Turtle Mountain Trust Lands. Because voting in North Dakota is racially polarized, the current map prevents Native Americans from electing a candidate of choice to the State House in both District 9B and District 15.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Native American Rights Fund (NARF) and the Law Offices of Bryan Sells represent the plaintiffs in their suit. Robins Kaplan LLP represents the Spirit Lake Tribe.

On Nov. 11, 2021, North Dakota adopted new state legislative maps to account for the population changes captured by the 2020 Census. The map redraws the state’s 47 legislative districts, which are used for elections in the State Senate and House of Representatives. Each district is represented by one state senator and two members of the State House who are elected at large within the district, except for two districts that are divided into two House Subdistricts that each elect one house candidate.

Tribal Nations were largely excluded from the 2021 redistricting process in North Dakota. Even after repeated requests from tribal leaders, the North Dakota Redistricting Committee failed to hold a single meeting on tribal land. Despite the barriers to participation, Tribal Nations and individual Native voters worked to make their voices heard. After the North Dakota Legislative Redistricting Committee released the draft map that packs and cracks Spirit Lake and Turtle Mountain citizens, Spirit Lake Chairman Douglas Yankton and Turtle Mountain Chairman Jamie Azure issued a joint letter to North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and leaders of the State Legislature detailing their Tribal Nations’ request to be placed into a single at large legislative district and a finding that the legislature’s proposed map would likely violate Section 2 of the VRA. Both chairmen testified in support of the Tribal Nations being drawn into a single district before the Legislative Redistricting Committee. The complaint alleges that the legislature ignored the Tribes’ requests and adopted an illegal map, depriving Native voters in northern North Dakota of a second representative in the State House.

Persistent Discrimination in North Dakota

The discriminatory state legislative map is only a part of North Dakota’s long and troubled history of discrimination against Native Americans, including in voting. North Dakota expressly barred most Native people from voting until 1922. Even after Native Americans officially won the right to vote in North Dakota, state and local officials continued to enact laws and policies that diminished Native political power.

During the past decade, the State Legislature enacted a series of discriminatory voter validation laws that disenfranchised Native American voters by requiring voters to present photo ID listing their street address in order to vote. These laws made voting in nontribal elections burdensome or even impossible for the many Native voters living on reservations who had not been assigned street addresses and therefore did not have the requisite ID. After challenging the law in federal court, the Spirit Lake Nation, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and individual Native voters, represented by  CLC and NARF, obtained a court-ordered consent decree with the Secretary of State, requiring North Dakota to implement certain safeguards for voters without qualifying identification.

The effects of the state’s discriminatory voting laws and practices are reflected the in lack of Native representation in the State Legislature. Even though Native people make up approximately 7% of the state’s population according to the 2020 U.S. Census, only 3 of the North Dakota’s 141 state legislators are tribal citizens — accounting for only 2% of the Legislative Assembly.

Native American voters have a right to maps that will allow them to make their voiced heard and have an equal say in the future of North Dakota. If left unchallenged, the new map would continue to dilute Native American voting power in violation of the VRA.

Fed up with partisan gerrymandering in Michigan’s state legislative and congressional districts, Voters Not Politicians (VNP) proposed a ballot initiative in Michigan that would create an independent redistricting commission (IRC), passing it overwhelmingly in November 2018. After volunteers collected over 425,000 signatures from Michigan voters in every one of the state’s counties, submitted the initiative to be put on the general election ballot in November and survived several legal challenges, Proposal 2 was put on the ballot in the midterm election. On Nov. 6, 2018, 61% (over 2.5 million) of Michigan voters passed Proposal 2, amending the Michigan Constitution to establish an IRC. Michigan voters of both major political parties supported the amendment, including voters in 67 of Michigan’s 83 counties.

IRCs take the power of redistricting out of the hands of partisan legislators, who have proven that they will use the process to gain power when given the opportunity to do so. IRCs instead give the power to the citizens to choose their representatives and create a more fair and transparent process for redrawing districts. After receiving the results of the 2020 Census, Michigan’s IRC drew new congressional districts, following the criteria established by the amendment. On Jan. 20, 2022, a group of plaintiffs filed suit against the commissioners and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson challenging the map, arguing that the congressional map adopted by the commission violates the “one person, one vote” requirement and that the IRC failed to comply with the guidelines prescribed by the Michigan Constitution. The plaintiffs are also seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the congressional maps from being used in future elections and requiring new maps to be drawn.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) represents VNP as a proposed intervenor-defendant in this case. VNP moved to intervene in the lawsuit shortly after it was filed, in order to offer its expertise and insights as the drafter and sponsor of the constitutional amendment at issue and defend the commission’s work to draw fair maps for the state of Michigan.