The lawsuit accuses the state of violating the 15th Amendment, which prohibits government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling, which found district boundaries drawn primarily with racial considerations are unconstitutional.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation filed the lawsuit May 8 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois after the high court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais on April 29.
“States may not use race to allocate power,” the group’s president and general counsel, John Christian Adams, said.
The suit specifically named Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, the Illinois State Board of Elections, and its executive director Bernadette Matthews as defendants.
None immediately responded to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
Pritzker signed a new congressional map for his state in 2021, and he said at the time that the “Illinois Voting Rights Act of 2011 ensures redistricting plans are crafted in a way that preserves clusters of minority voters if they are of size or cohesion to exert collective electoral power. The maps signed into law today meet those requirements to adequately preserve minority representation and reflect the diversity of our state.”
The Public Interest Legal Foundation argued in the lawsuit that this statement from the governor is a direct admission to violating federal law in using race to draw districts.
Furthermore, the Illinois Voting Rights Act of 2011 illegally mandated a racial map, ordering districts to be created as crossover, coalition, or influence districts, the group said.
According to the state’s legislation, a crossover district is where majority voters vote with the racial or language minority to elect their preferred candidate.
A coalition district is where more than one group of racial or language minorities can form a coalition to elect a candidate of all of their choice. An influence district is where a racial or language minority can impact the outcome of an election even if its preferred candidate cannot be elected.
All three types of districts in Illinois require “drawing district lines to preserve deliberate racial percentages, racial majorities, and the deliberate preservation of racial influence districts,” the lawsuit read.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/illinois-sued-over-allegedly-using-race-factor-congressional-map