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On Monday, a three-judge panel will consider whether a federal lawsuit challenging Arkansas’ U.S. House congressional district map will go to trial in the spring.
The lawsuit, filed last May by the Legal Defense Fund, O’Melveny & Myers LLP, and longtime Arkansas civil rights attorney, Arkie Byrd, is one of four cases that have challenged Arkansas’ 2021 redistricting process. It focuses solely on the 2nd congressional district, and it is the only case that hasn’t been dismissed.
The Christian Ministerial Alliance — a pastoral organization based in Little Rock — and four Pulaski County voters sued Secretary of State John Thurston in his official capacity. They allege that the General Assembly considered racial data when determining district lines and unconstitutionally “cracked the Black community” in southeast Pulaski County into three separate congressional districts.
The state’s attorneys asked the court last month to rule on a motion for summary judgment in favor of the state but plaintiffs’ lawyers recently told the Advocate they feel confident the case will go forward. If it proceeds, the court has planned for a maximum 10-day trial in March.
“It was unprecedented to crack Pulaski County in any map, and to do so in three ways was even the more aggressive, extreme way of going against how they had treated that county historically,” said Leah Aden, senior counsel for the Legal Defense Fund.
The 2021 congressional district map split Pulaski County, which previously was all in Arkansas’ 2nd congressional district, into Districts 1, 2 and 4. Plaintiffs argue the redistricting violates the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by intentionally separating Black voters to “to thwart their political power.”
Pulaski County is in Central Arkansas and houses the state capital, Little Rock. It is the state’s most populous county and has a large population of Black residents — 38% of its total 400,000 residents, according to the U.S. Census.
The state’s attorneys argued in their brief for summary judgment that plaintiffs cannot meet their “demanding evidentiary burden to prove racial gerrymandering.”
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The brief also states the 2021 map shows the General Assembly was “motivated to equalize the population of the four districts, reduce the number of split counties, secure a great partisan advantage in [District 2] over the previous Democrat-drawn map and otherwise make minimal changes to the preexisting lines.”
The brief also opposes a number of alternatively drawn congressional maps from a plaintiffs’ expert.
The state sought to dismiss the suit last year before the discovery phase, but a three-judge panel denied the motion.
Aden said the 2021 map diminishes the power of the Black vote, which could produce different election results. All four of Arkansas’ U.S. House seats have been held by white Republicans for at least a decade, despite Democratic efforts. Incumbents again won their elections this November.
At the local level, Black voters “exercising their political might” is evidenced through historically successful bids of Black candidates for Little Rock mayor, Pulaski County clerk and sheriff, Aden said. The 2021 map also affects how neighbors can organize for local improvements or funding as Black voters now make up no more than 20% of the population in any of the three districts, she said.
“It has real consequences for their ability to organize as a community and advocate for policies that impact their lives, such as infrastructure funding, health care funding, funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” Aden said.
In the state’s motion for summary judgment from October, attorneys argued that the southeast corner of Pulaski County is suitable for the three-way split.
“There is simply no other place where a significant number of Democratic votes could be moved from [District 2] while otherwise making minimal changes to the district’s configuration,” according to the supporting brief. “Plaintiffs’ claim that the split singled out [B]lack voters for worse treatment than white voters is contradicted by the fact that there are no significant blocs of white Democratic voters located near the border of [District 2] in any other location — certainly not in an area where they can be split to balance three congressional districts at the same time.”
In a brief filed in opposition to the state’s motion for summary judgment, plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that more Black residents were moved out of District 2 than white residents, regardless of political party.
Aden told the Advocate that while the redistricting lawsuit focuses on Black voters in Pulaski County, it should “be an affront to all voters who signed up for a fair redistricting process.”
Regarding the timeline of the potential spring trial Aden said, “Every election matters, and every election that happens under what we think is a discriminatory, unfair map is one election too many.”
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