Republicans filed suit against Proposition 50 before the ink on Wednesday morning’s vote tally was dry. The ballot measure — which California and Santa Barbara County voters passed by a two-thirds majority in a special election this Tuesday — will redraw California’s congressional map to favor House Democrats in five currently Republican-controlled districts. Arguing that the new map illegally takes Latino residents into account, the state GOP’s legal action is the second filed by Republicans against the measure and asks for a temporary restraining order. The first attempt, which was to block the vote, was unsuccessful.
This time, Republicans hope to piggyback on a case pending at the Supreme Court, media sources report. That case, Louisiana v. Callais, examines whether race can determine congressional district boundaries, which is an element of the Voting Rights Act.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the new map creates no greater number of what are called “majority-minority” districts than the previous map, The New York Times reported.
Since 2010, California’s congressional districts have been drawn by its Citizens Redistricting Commission, created by popular vote in 2008 to take political maps out of the hands of politicians to the degree possible.
In its guiding criteria, California’s Redistricting Commission must consider the right of “minorities [to] have an equal opportunity to elect a representative of their choice” and also “respect the boundaries of cities, counties, neighborhoods and communities of interest, and minimize their division, to the extent possible.”
A community of interest is defined as a community with common social and economic interests. Much as has been found among doctors and patients, the theory is that an elected official of similar background to the people they represent can understand, relate, and advocate more forcefully for that electorate.
While the Supreme Court denied the GOP’s emergency petition to block the special election, Rep. Darrell Issa of San Diego filed another challenge on October 9 in a federal court in Texas, along with Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, according to media sources. Issa, who as chair of the House Oversight Committee once accused the Obama administration of targeting Tea Party members through the IRS but famously refused to take “no” for an answer, saw his San Diego district joined to a more liberal area of Palm Springs. The judge in Texas — the Trump-appointed Matthew Kacsmaryk — disagreed this Tuesday on several grounds, including that Issa should have sued in California and that gerrymandering his district amounted to a “loss of political power, not loss of any private right.”
The new suit against Prop 50, brought by Assemblymember David Tangipa of Fresno and state GOP chair Corrin Rankin, takes its place among 15 similar suits around the country, the Brennan Center reported, against maps in Texas, North Carolina, and California. The Louisiana case on racial gerrymandering might not affect those results, however, as the Supreme Court isn’t expected to take it up until next June, after the pending redrawn maps are complete.
