A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Update, 7 July 2016. The case was decided on 4 April 2016, with the court ruling 8–0 (decision, PDF) that apportioning on the basis of total population was legal. Therefore, Montana’s reservation districts remain intact. More information on Evenwel is available at Scotusblog.
Updated, 28 May. Today the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a Texas case, Evenwel v. Abbott, that could affect Montana’s Indian majority legislative districts. In general, the plaintiffs are asking that state legislative districts be equalized not on the basis of total population but on the basis voting age or voting eligible populations (VAP includes non-citizens, VEP includes only citizens).
A victory for the plaintiffs, the New York Times’ Adam Liptak reports, would have far-reaching consequences:
If the challengers succeed, the practical consequences would be enormous, Joseph R. Fishkin, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin wrote in 2012 in The Yale Law Journal.
It would, he said, “shift power markedly at every level, away from cities and neighborhoods with many immigrants and many children and toward the older, whiter, more exclusively native-born areas in which a higher proportion of the total population consists of eligible voters.”
Montana has six Indian majority house, and three Indian majority senate districts:
Montana’s house districts are equalized on total population, with a plus or minus five three percent deviation permitted (the mean deviation achieved by the 2010 redistricting commission for both house and senate districts was less than one percent). But the voting age population in Montana’s Indian majority districts is significantly smaller than than the VAP in non-Indian majority districts:
If the U.S. Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in Evenwel v. Abbott, the required redrawing of legislative districts probably would have the practical effect of making it possible for Republicans to elect veto-proof majorities in both houses of Montana’s legislature.
