KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Sixteen Kansas residents are suing to block the state’s new congressional map, alleging that its redrawn district boundaries are a racial and partisan gerrymander.
The ACLU of Kansas and Campaign Legal Center, a national nonprofit good-government group, jointly filed a lawsuit Monday in Wyandotte County District Court on behalf of Kansans from Wyandotte County, Johnson County and Lawrence. A separate lawsuit from the national group Democracy Docket and the Kansas-based civic engagement group Loud Light was also filed Monday in Wyandotte County.
The lawsuits kick off a widely anticipated legal battle over the Republican-drawn map, which is based on population shifts recorded by the 2020 Census. The new district lines divide Wyandotte County, the state’s most racially and ethnically diverse area, in half. The ACLU suit says the map is an “extreme and intentional” gerrymander.
The county is split between the 3rd District, represented by Democrat Sharice Davids, and the 2nd District, represented by Republican Jake LaTurner. The county was previously entirely in the 3rd District.
The new map also places liberal-leaning Lawrence into the rural and conservative 1st Congressional District for the first time.
Both lawsuits asks the court to declare the map unconstitutional and the ACLU lawsuit asks for a deadline for the Legislature to enact a valid map. If the Legislature doesn’t pass a valid map, the lawsuits ask the court to impose its own district lines.
Republicans insist the lines are fair and drawn to account for changes in population over the past decade. Democrats, Wyandotte County community leaders and fair map advocates vehemently disagree, calling it a blatant political power grab.
“The people in the Kansas City metropolitan area have a real need and desire to elect representatives that are going to represent their interests in Congress,” Sharon Brett, legal director of the ACLU of Kansas, said in an interview.
“What this map does is basically run roughshod over those interests and over those desires and does so for political gain … we cannot be in the business of playing partisan games with constitutional rights.”
Brett called the decision to split Wyandotte County, placing a large portion of its minority voters in a white-rural district, clear racial and partisan gerrymandering. The quick process between introduction and passage of the map, she said, is evidence of the intent.
“It appears from the process that legislative leadership knew what they wanted to do and they went and did it and consequences be damned,” she said.
Both lawsuits are filed against Secretary of State Scott Schwab and Wyandotte County Election Commissioner Michael Abbott. Although neither official had a role in drafting or approving the map, they are both tasked with administering elections.
The Kansas attorney general’s office is expected to defend the map in court.
“At its heart, the once-per-decade redistricting process is about ensuring every person’s vote counts. The newly enacted congressional boundaries do that, and we are prepared to vigorously defend them against any partisan political lawsuits that long have been threatened,” Attorney General Derek Schmidt said in a statement last week.
Schmidt is the presumptive Republican nominee for governor and expected to face Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who opposed the map, in the general election this November.
Republican lawmakers anticipated lawsuits against the map would come but have been confident about their chances in court.
“Based on what’s happened across the United States these types of maps are going to be upheld. A lot of attorneys will make money trying but I’m pretty confident that it gets upheld,” House Speaker Ron Ryckman, an Olathe Republican, said last week.
The map culminates more than a year of anxiety among Democrats and anti-gerrymandering advocates that began in September 2020 when Susan Wagle, then the Republican Senate president, said it would be possible for lawmakers to draw boundaries that ensure Davids is defeated in the 3rd District.
At town halls in August, residents brought up Wagle’s words and warned lawmakers against dividing Wyandotte County. The county had been within a single district for the past 40 years. When Republicans unveiled the map last month, House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer, a Wichita Democrat, said he thought it was a joke.
But the map is now state law, after Republican lawmakers mustered enough votes last week to override Kelly’s veto.
“Instead of preserving the integrity the Kansas City metro area, however, (the map) divides the metro area through the middle of Kansas City and Wyandotte, in favor of keeping Johnson whole. But Johnson County has far more disparate geography and encompasses distinct communities of interest, unlike entirely urban Wyandotte,” the Democracy Docket lawsuit reads.
Both lawsuits allege the map violates provisions in the Kansas Constitution guaranteeing equal rights, free speech and the right to suffrage. Their petitions cite Wagle’s words as evidence of gerrymandering.
“Although it remains unclear who actually drafted the Enacted Plan, the intent of state Republican party leaders was made clear in 2020, when then-Senate President Susan Wagle openly urged Republican legislators to pass a map ‘that takes out Sharice Davids up in the 3rd,’ and boasted, ‘I guarantee you we can draw four Republican congressional maps,’” the ACLU lawsuit reads.
The petition says the map has even earned the name the “Waglemander.”
The constitution says government is instituted for the “equal protection and benefit” of the people and that all men are entitled to equal rights. It guarantees the right of all people “to speak freely” and the right of every citizen 18 or older to vote.
The district map “imposes a severe burden on the right to vote that cannot be justified by a compelling state interest,” the lawsuit says.
The ACLU lawsuit says that more than 70% of the population removed from the 3rd District are minorities, while more than 90% of residents added are white.
“These shifts were made to destroy District 3 as a performing crossover district in which minority voters were able to elect their preferred candidate, currently a Native American woman,” the petition reads, referring to Davids.
The decision to sue in state court is unusual. While litigation over congressional maps is normal, past challenges in recent Kansas history have played out in federal court.
Redistricting experts told The Star that map opponents would face an uphill climb in federal court because the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 stopped the federal judiciary from reviewing districts for partisan gerrymandering. The court last week also signaled it may weaken protections against racial gerrymandering by allowing an Alabama map to go into effect despite a lower court decision that it must be redrawn to increase Black voting power.
The state lawsuits will begin in Wyandotte County District Court, where judges are elected, and it could reach the Kansas Supreme Court. A majority of justices on the high court were appointed by Democratic governors.
The plaintiffs include some residents who have already been outspoken in fighting back against the map. For instance, plaintiff Tom Alonzo, a 64-year-old gay Latinx man who lives in Kansas City, Kan., according to the ACLU lawsuit, will be moved into the 2nd District and plans to vote for Democrats in the future.
In the 2nd District, however, “he will have no chance of electing a Democrat to Congress,” the petition says.
Speaking to The Star last month, Alonzo said no clear divisions existed between northern and southern Wyandotte County. Most in the community, he said, moved between the two sides in their daily life.
“It’s a pattern going all across the United States where one side is trying to dilute the vote and prevent people from voting or preventing a vote to matter,” Alonzo said. “That’s not democratic, and it’s not just. It’s immoral and unethical.”
In the Democracy Docket lawsuit, plaintiff Faith Rivera, a Hispanic lifelong resident of Wyandotte County, is a community activist. The suit contends the new district boundaries mean the communities and individuals she regularly engages with will be split between two districts.
Amy Carter, a 44-year-old white woman in Overland Park, will remain in the 3rd District, according to the ACLU suit, “but the cracking of Democratic voters in District 3 substantially decreases the chance that she and other Democratic voters will be able to elect the candidate of their choice.”
The sole Lawrence plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit, Melinda Lavon, is a 42-year-old white woman and a midwife. The mapmakers “cracked her community” and moved her and other Democratic voters into the 1st District “to prevent her from electing a candidate of her choice.”
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