Despite the surge in Illinois’ minority population over the last decade, a controversial federal appellate court ruling threatens to dilute their political representation and vastly complicate efforts to redraw congressional and legislative districts before next year’s elections.
The ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a minority challenge to the number of city wards with white majorities, was handed down in 1998. But only now, as politicians begin the always-sensitive task of mapping out political power for the next decade, are they beginning to focus on its implications.
In Chicago alone, by some estimates, the ruling could mean that more than 60 percent of the753,644 Hispanics counted as living in the city in the 2000 census may not be factored in when new political boundaries take effect.
In the decision authored by Judge Richard Posner, the three-judge panel set a new standard for the region in determining whether minority groups are appropriately represented in the political boundaries that are redrawn every 10 years to conform to the shifts in population that are reported in the census.
Rather than counting every resident to reflect whether the number of minority districts is adequate in drawing a new political map, Posner said only residents who were of voting age and held U.S. citizenship should be figured into the equation.
Such a standard, Posner ruled, “best comports with the policy” of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, which sought to end racial political barriers for minority participation in the election process.
The appellate court ruling could have a dramatic effect on the state’s burgeoning Hispanic population, which Posner noted has a sizable number of non-citizens compared with other minority groups and also tends to have larger families with children under 18.
But it also complicates the task of mapmakers. Political cartographers in Springfield and Chicago recently received census data showing various details that will help them divvy up the state and city population. But the U.S. Census Bureau does not plan to release data on citizenship until June 2002–long after the deadline for creating new political boundaries.
Moreover, the data on the population of citizens of voting age that the census will eventually provide is only an estimate. It will be based on information the Census Bureau gets from residents who filled out the long form, which was sent to only one in six households.
“They put this standard out there for proportionality, but it’s a standard that almost all experts agree you can’t come up with at this stage,” said Maria Valdez, senior litigator for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Best guesstimate
“I’ve talked to a number of demographers, PhDs and sociologists who say there is no reliable way of doing it. It’s only somebody’s best guesstimate,” Valdez said. “They’re going to have to come up with a guess and then … whoever comes up with the closest best guess wins.”
The ruling represents a serious complicating factor for redistricting, which is already the most politically arduous task that elected officials endure.
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In the redistricting process, Republicans and Democrats each attempt to draw political boundaries to maximize their political power for the next decade–at the expense of the other party. At the same time, lawmakers seek boundaries that will make their re-election easier.
But the federal Voting Rights Act and subsequent U.S. Supreme Court rulings have created a difficult and sometimes contradictory field of law when it comes to ensuring that African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans and other groups are fairly represented in legislative bodies across the nation.
The federal 7th Circuit includes not just Illinois, but Indiana and Wisconsin, and by precedent the redistricting standard set by the appellate court should apply in those states as well. Federal appellate courts in circuits that cover Texas and Florida, both states with large Hispanic populations, have ordered similar standards for political redistricting.
A variety of groups representing Latinos contend the 7th Circuit rule is unfair and could undercut their efforts to flex political muscle proportionate to the rapidly growing size of their community.
“We think that ruling has such specific and dire consequences,” said Juan Andrade Jr., president and co-founder of the Chicago-based U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute. “And since it effectively disenfranchises tens of thousands of residents of the state, it obviously has constitutional problems.”
But, in his 1998 decision, Posner wrote that “neither the census nor any other policy or practice suggests that Congress wants non-citizens to participate in the electoral system as fully as the concept of virtual representation would allow.”
Citizenship’s dignity diluted
He added that “the dignity and very concept of citizenship are diluted” if non-citizens are allowed to be counted.
In Chicago, the 2000 census results showed that Hispanics make up 26 percent of the city’s almost 2.9 million residents, while blacks make up 36 percent and whites total 31 percent.
But when voting-age population is considered, Hispanics fall to 23 percent and blacks to 34 percent of the city’s residents who are age 18 and older. At the same time, the voting-age share of whites in the city rises to 37 percent.
The minority influence on the political map decreases considerably further when the citizenship standard is applied.
In the 1990 census, only 37 percent of the city’s Hispanic population were citizens of voting age, compared with 68 percent of the African-American population and 79 percent of the white population.
If those percentages were applied to the 2000 census, the political influence of the city’s Hispanic population would be reduced from the 753,644 Hispanics who were counted in the census to 278,848.
With the release of citizenship data more than a year away, and elections based on newly drawn legislative boundaries scheduled in the state next March, officials from the U.S. Census Bureau could provide little guidance to political cartographers.
Mapmakers need equation
“They could manufacture some numbers by having a statistician take the known rates from the last census and apply it to the new (2000) population, but you’re going to have some error in it, and it may not stand up in court if the numbers are challenged,” said Dianne Schmidley, senior foreign-born specialist with the Census Bureau’s Population Division.
“Basically, it sounds like someone wrote a law and there is nothing to support it,” she said of Posner’s ruling.
Illinois’ legislative and congressional mapmakers said they were familiar with Posner’s ruling and were examining ways to meet it. But one cartographer said he was basing his map for the state’s congressional and legislative boundaries on total population in an effort to show the courts that every effort was made to ensure as many minority seats as possible.
Other states also are cognizant of the ruling. For example, in Minnesota–which is not part of the 7th Circuit–mapmakers are being told to draw their boundaries based on voting-age population while the citizenship data is pending.
“I don’t know how a court, in evaluating a legislative map that’s done before the data is available, can be too critical,” said Peter Watson, who serves as legal counsel in the Minnesota state Senate. “It’s just information that we don’t have.”
Yet many involved in redistricting in Illinois see Posner’s decision as a basis for a court challenge.
“They have set up a standard that is unworkable and impractical when redistricting must occur. We can’t wait two years. It’s got to happen now,” said Valdez of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “It’s one more way to get things into litigation, which we’ll be in anyway.”