Common Cause eyes litigation over Colorado's congressional redistricting plan

An influential nonpartisan organization on Wednesday indicated it’s looking at bringing a legal challenge against Colorado’s redistricting maps.

In a webinar held by Common Cause, a good governance organization that often aligns with Democrats in the Colorado statehouse, the group’s national redistricting director said The Centennial State was one of 11 states where the group was eying litigation.

“That's just because (those states) had a totally dysfunctional process because the maps that they drew disregarded the voting rights act or other legal requirements,” said Common Cause’s Kathay Feng . Along with Colorado, she said maps drawn in Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Minnesota were “on the front burner.”

Jennifer Parenti, the lead redistricting organizer for Common Cause Colorado slammed the independent commission that drew the congressional maps for the way the proposed boundaries treat communities of color, particularly Latinos, as diversity booms in the “rapidly growing state.”

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“Unfortunately, this proposed congressional map does not reflect that diversity,” Parenti said. “It rather splits our communities of color across multiple districts while seemingly prioritizing municipal boundaries and protecting incumbents.”

While she noted it's not possible to create a congressional district where a single racial, ethnic or language minority group has a 50% plus 1% voting-age majority, Parenti said Common Cause had drafted maps of its own that showed it was possible to draw a district where Latinos hold a voting-age plurality. She also said Common Cause's map-drawing showed the commission could have also opted for boundaries that gave coalitions of communities of color majorities in two districts.

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“Unfortunately our commission elected not to respect either approach and left our communities of color scattered across multiple districts,” she said. “This significantly dilutes their electoral influence.”

Like the other Common Cause employees on the panel, Parenti advocated for the Freedom to Vote Act, a measure sponsored by Democrats in the U.S. Senate. According to Parenti, provisions from that bill would benefit Colorado's redistricting process, even as the state is “often upheld as the gold standard for inclusive and safe election practices.”

Parenti’s concerns mirrors complaints brought by a pair of Latino advocacy organizations, who announced plans to challenge the map less than a day after the commission’s adoption last week of its final map. Both the Colorado Latino Leadership Advocacy and Research Organization and the League of United Latin American Citizens said they believe the maps run afoul of requirements not to dilute minority voting power.

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The new redistricting process, which follows from ballot measures that amended the state constitution to create the independent commission system now being used, passed with overwhelming voter support in 2018, and requires the Colorado Supreme Court to review the adopted map and decide whether the new constitutional requirements have been met. If they decide the requirements have been met, then the map will be adopted for use over the next decade.

Parenti indicated Common Cause is preparing briefs to send to the state Supreme Court along with the commission’s map, which is due to the high court by the end of the week.

“We'll have to see how the court responds to understand exactly how we want to go forward,” she said.