‘Illinois has districting criteria that violates the United States Constitution explicitly by elevating race as a primary purpose in legislative line drawing,’ a new lawsuit alleges.
A key Illinois election law unlawfully requires the prioritization of race in drawing legislative districts, a new lawsuit alleges. The suit was brought in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision stripping states’ ability to use race in the redistricting process.
“States may not use race to allocate power,” said Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams, whose group spearheaded the legal challenge.
Announced on Monday, the lawsuit brought by PILF on behalf of Illinois resident Jeanne Ives contests that the state “has districting criteria that violates the United States Constitution explicitly by elevating race as a primary purpose in legislative line drawing.” Ives more specifically takes to task the Illinois Voting Rights Act (ILVRA), which she argues “mandates the creation of racial districts in violation of [her] civil rights protected by the Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Section 2(a) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (‘Voting Rights Act’).”
“The Voting Rights Act forbids enforcing election procedures enacted with a racial intent or that results in a denial, or abridgment, of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race,” the lawsuit reads. “The Illinois Voting Rights Act requires drawing district lines to preserve deliberate racial percentages, racial majorities, and the deliberate preservation of racial influence districts. This violates the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.”
The suit was brought in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois against Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the Illinois State Board of Elections, and its executive director, Bernadette Matthews.
The ILVRA specifically requires that “any redistricting plan pursuant to Article IV, Section 3 of the Illinois Constitution [Illinois Const., Art. IV, § 3], Legislative Districts and Representative Districts shall be drawn, subject to subsection (d) of this Section, to create crossover districts, coalition districts, or influence districts.” The statute defines “crossover districts” as those in which a “racial minority or language minority constitutes less than a majority of the voting-age population but where this minority, at least potentially, is large enough to elect the candidate of its choice with help from voters who are members of the majority and who cross over to support the minority’s preferred candidate.”