Federal court throws out June legislative maps, declines to send issue to bipartisan commission

A three-judge federal court panel in Chicago ruled Tuesday that the legislative redistricting plan that Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law in June — before official 2020 U.S. Census numbers were available — was unconstitutional because the population variances among districts violated the “one-person, one-vote” doctrine.But the court did not, as Republican officials had hoped, order that a bipartisan redistricting commission be formed to redraw the maps. Instead, it declared the second set of maps that Pritzker signed in September, following a legislative special session, to be a “starting point” in developing a new map, and it invited plaintiffs in two cases challenging the redistricting process to propose their own solutions.”Challenges to redistricting maps are routine. They occur every 10 years, like clockwork, during each census cycle,” the court wrote. “As this case and countless before it illustrate, parties need time to compile a record; courts need time to issue a ruling; and on occasion one or another aspect of a redistricting plan needs revision to comply with the law. Sometimes the revisions are minor.”That opinion set the stage for the next phase of the two lawsuits that were filed in June, arguing that the legislative maps that Democrats pushed through the General Assembly in the spring violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.Those maps were based on population estimates from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey because official data from the 2020 census had been delayed, largely due to the pandemic.Democrats argued that they needed to move forward because the Illinois Constitution gives the General Assembly until only June 30 in the year following a decennial census to approve a redistricting plan. The official census numbers were not available until mid-August.After June 30, the state constitution requires the formation of a bipartisan legislative commission to draw new maps, a process in which either party would have a 50-50 chance of controlling the outcome.One of the lawsuits was filed by Republican leaders of the General Assembly, Sen. Dan McConchie, of Hawthorn Woods, and Rep. Jim Durkin, of Western Springs. They were later joined by the House and Senate GOP caucuses and the Illinois Republican Party.They urged the court to declare the maps unconstitutional and, because no constitutional maps had been enacted by June 30, order the formation of the bipartisan commission required under the Illinois Constitution.The second lawsuit was filed by a group of Hispanic voters in the Chicago area who were represented by attorneys from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF. They had asked the court to declare the maps unconstitutional and for the court itself to order a remedy.But defendants in the case — who included House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, Senate President Don Harmon, the Illinois State Board of Elections and its individual members, argued that because lawmakers had come back in the summer to pass a second set of maps, any challenge to the first set of maps should be considered “moot.”The court, however, rejected that argument, noting that even though lawmakers had passed a second set of maps, they never specifically repealed the first set, which meant there was nothing to prevent the Democratic majority from going back at a later date and re-enacting them.But it also rejected the Republicans’ request to order formation of a bipartisan commission, calling that “implausible,” given the limited time remaining before the 2022 primaries.