Census delay puts off redistricting

With the coronavirus putting U.S. census results on hold for at least four months, the California Supreme Court approved lawmakers’ request Friday to delay an independent commission’s onceperdecade redrawing of lines for legislative and congressional districts next year so that they can be ready by the 2022 elections.

Because the Census Bureau now plans to release population data to the states on July 31, 2021, four months later than originally scheduled, the Citizens Redistricting Commission will be given a fourmonth extension of its legal deadline, until Nov. 1, 2021, to prepare and release new district maps for public comment, the court said in a unanimous ruling.

The commission would then have until Dec. 15 to issue final maps for the 2022 elections for Congress, the Assembly and state Senate, and the state Board of Equalization. If the Census Bureau takes longer, the deadlines will be extended further, the court said, while urging the commission to act more quickly if census information is available earlier than expected.

The ruling allows the commission “to undertake the careful and transparent redistricting process voters envisioned when the commission was created more than a decade ago,” said state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, DSan Diego.

The ruling was not surprising — the extension was supported by legislators, whose redistricting role was taken over by the commission, and by the state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Alex Padilla. But it underscored the momentous decisions California voters made in 2008 when they established the nonpartisan 14member panel to draw new legislative and Board of Equalization district lines after each census and in 2010 when they extended its authority to congressional districts.

Since the Supreme Court’s “oneperson, onevote” ruling in 1962 that required districts to be equal in population, postcensus redistricting has been conducted by legislators in most states, leading to gerrymandered district lines that typically favor the majority party and incumbent lawmakers of both parties.

The 2008 and 2010 California initiatives were the first in the nation to establish an independent commission whose members — five Democrats, five Republicans and four affiliated with neither party — are chosen by random draw from applicants screened by a review panel. Both initiatives were opposed by legislative Democrats, the majority party.

A redistricting commission established by Arizona voters in 2000, with four of the five members chosen by legislators of opposing parties, was challenged in court by state lawmakers. They cited a U.S. constitutional provision saying the standards for elections of representatives “shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.”

The Supreme Court upheld the commission in a 54 ruling in 2015, saying a state can delegate legislative responsibilities to its voters. Arizonans decided that “the voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in the majority opinion.

But while the Supreme Court has ruled that state lawmakers who draw their own district lines cannot discriminate by race, the court ruled in 2018 that it could not strike down partisan gerrymandering, redistricting that favored one party.

Sixteen states will have district lines drawn by independent or bipartisan commissions next year.

The court case is Legislature vs. Padilla, S262530.