The United States Supreme Court could weigh in on Washington state’s redraw of legislative district lines in Central Washington.
The case comes in the wake of a national ruling on redistricting and raises questions about whether primary elections would happen on time in Washington.
This map was the subject of a lawsuit, Soto Palmer v. Hobbs, that was settled two years ago. Opponents of that decision are now petitioning the nation’s highest court to examine the matter after a federal judge in Western Washington denied their request to re-open the case late last week.
Washington state’s bipartisan redistricting commission attempted to set new legislative lines in 2021, but that map was challenged and ultimately redrawn to consolidate Latino communities in the Yakima Valley. Plaintiffs successfully argued that the original map divided those communities, diluting Latino voting power.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik affirmed the redrawn lines as valid in 2024. Lasnik declined last week to reconsider the matter.
Opponents of the redrawn lines, including House Minority Leader Drew Stokesbary (R-Auburn), want the state to revert back to the 2021 map. They unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case in 2023.
But the case has taken on new relevance after the U.S. Supreme Court’s April ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which limited the use of race in redistricting.
The Louisiana v. Callais ruling, which struck down congressional maps in Louisiana as racially discriminatory, kicked off a flurry of redistricting efforts in states across the country. Mississippi and North Dakota have also petitioned the Supreme Court over their respective legislative maps, but the court has declined to rule on them, instead asking lower courts to reconsider their decisions.
The Supreme Court has a few options for handling Washington’s case: deny the petition and affirm the District Court’s ruling, order the District Court to reconsider its ruling in light of Louisiana v. Callais, or take up the case.
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, has said that overturning district lines this close to the August primary election would be a “recipe for chaos,” according to a quote from the Washington State Standard.
Other experts think that’s unlikely to happen.
Sonni Waknin, an attorney with the UCLA Voting Rights Project and one of the lead plaintiffs in the Soto Palmer v. Hobbs case, said if the Supreme Court were to take this case, a decision probably wouldn’t come in time to redraw lines for this election year or to delay this year’s primary.
Waknin also argued that Washington’s redrawn legislative maps were not based solely on race, as opponents have been arguing.
“What we're looking at is not two far-flung communities that have nothing in common with each other other than race. Here, it's a community that makes sense to be put together and is truly a community of interest,” Waknin said.
