Kansas court upholds redrawn House map
TOPEKA, Kan. — Republicans on Wednesday improved their chances of flipping the only Kansas congressional seat held by a Democrat, when the state’s highest court upheld the new congressional map they drew.
The map slices territory out of the Kansas City-area district Democratic U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids has carried by a 2-to-1 margin and replaces it with three counties that former President Donald Trump carried by more than 40 percentage points in 2020. Republicans argued that Davids still would have carried the new district two years ago and that the map was a fair way to rebalance the number of residents in each of the state’s four districts after 10 years of population shifts.
Attorneys for the Kansas voters and voting rights group that challenged the map urged the state Supreme Court to declare that broad language about “inalienable natural rights” and “equal protection and benefits” in the state’s bill of rights bars overly partisan and racial gerrymandering.
But the justices didn’t have that opinion.
Their decision bucks what has been a trend in a small but growing number of states since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision in 2019 that complaints about partisan gerrymandering are political issues and not for the federal courts to resolve.
“The only remedy for people wanting to challenge maps is in state courts,” said Michael Li, an attorney and redistricting expert for the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. “Kansas is potentially the only one that may say it isn’t covered by the state constitution.”
The Kansas court’s reasoning is not yet clear. Its opinion was two paragraphs long, saying only that the voters and voting rights group challenging the map “have not prevailed on their claims” that the map violated the state constitution and that a full opinion would come later.
The brief decision was written by Justice Caleb Stegall, who is seen as the most conservative of the court’s seven justices, five of whom were appointed by Democratic governors. During arguments from attorneys on Monday, he questioned whether anyone could clearly define improper partisan gerrymandering.
Lawsuits over new congressional district lines have proliferated across the U.S., with Republicans looking to recapture a U.S. House majority in this year’s midterm elections. Congressional maps in at least 17 states have inspired lawsuits, according to the Brennan Center.
State courts have issued decisions favoring Democrats in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. New York’s highest court recently declared that that state’s new districts were gerrymandered to favor Democrats.
In Kansas, the Republican-controlled Legislature enacted the map over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto, and Davids said Wednesday that new district lines resulted from “rushed hearings” and “back-room deals.” Her likely GOP opponent, Amanda Adkins, said in a statement that the new map “is evidence that our democratic process works.”
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican running for governor, hailed the ruling as a victory for “the public’s right to establish new districts through their elected representatives.”
Meanwhile, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed new U.S. House districts into law Wednesday that are expected to shore up Republican strength in the state’s most competitive congressional district ahead of this year’s elections.
The new voting districts took effect immediately, meaning they will be place for the Aug. 2 primary. But local election authorities will have to scramble to make the behindthe-scenes changes necessary for absentee ballots to be available by next month.
That map that passed is expected to continue Republicans’ decade-long 6-2 advantage over Democrats in the state’s congressional delegation.
Missouri is one of the final few states to enact a congressional redistricting plan based on the 2020 census. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has yet to sign a redistricting plan, and court challenges have upended maps originally adopted in Florida and New York.