CASE SUMMARY

On June 9, 2021, the Illinois Senate and House Minority Leaders filed a federal lawsuit against the Illinois State Board of Elections, state election officials, the Illinois Senate President, and the Illinois House Speaker challenging the state’s legislative redistricting plans, which were enacted before 2020 Census redistricting data was released using population estimates from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (“ACS”), as malapportioned in violation of the 14th Amendment’s one person, one vote requirement, citing the inherent inaccuracies in ACS population estimates as making it impossible to guarantee substantially equal populations amongst districts. They sought a judicial declaration the plans were unconstitutional, a permanent injunction barring the plans from use in future elections, and a writ of mandamus requiring the defendants to appoint members to the state constitution’s mandated bipartisan commission charged with enacting legislative plans when the legislature fails to do so.

  • On June 25, 2021, a similar challenge, Contreras v. Ill. State Bd. of Elections, was reassigned to the judge handling this case.
  • On September 24, 2021, Illinois enacted revised versions of their legislative plans using the official 2020 census data and, soon after, plaintiffs amended their complaint to challenge these new plans as diluting minority voters’ voting strength in violation of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”) and as racial gerrymanders in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
  • On October 19, 2021, the three-judge district court panel granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs and invalidated the state’s legislative plans as violating one person, one vote, citing its particularly large deviations in population, the Census Bureau’s explicit statement that ACS data shouldn’t be used for redistricting, and the fact there would’ve been ample time for the state to enact redistricting plans after the delayed release of 2020 Census data regardless of whether is was by the General Assembly or the state constitution’s backup redistricting commission. The court also struck down the state’s revised plans as substantially based off the malapportioned original plans but stated it would treat them as the General Assembly’s remedial plan submission. On November 10, 2021, plaintiffs submitted their own remedial plan proposals to the court.
  • On December 30, 2021, the district court panel upheld the revised legislative plans, finding there was sufficient evidence of crossover voting to defeat the plaintiffs’ § 2 claim and rejecting their racial gerrymandering claim on the grounds the legislature’s predominant consideration was partisan, not racial, gerrymandering, which SCOTUS had held to be nonjusticiable in federal courts.

Related Cases: Contreras v. Ill. State Bd. of Elections; East St. Louis Branch of the NAACP v. Ill. State Bd. of Elections

CASE LIBRARY

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division - No. 1:21-cv-3091