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Lawsuit claims Irving voting district violates equal protection

12:00 AM CST on Friday, February 12, 2010
By BRANDON FORMBY
bformby@dallasnews.com

Eleven Irving residents on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit against the city, claiming the new single-member City Council District 1 violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The suit argues that citizenship of each single-member district's population was not taken into account when Irving's new election system was devised and that only overall population was considered. The lawsuit says such a system violates the "one person, one vote" provision of the 14th Amendment because the number of eligible voters in each district varies widely.

The suit does not seek to prevent the city from using the new system in the May 8 elections.

The suit also argues that District 1, whose voters are believed to be majority Hispanic, has fewer citizens who have reached voting age compared with the populations of the other five single-member districts.

"The Plan thus substantially dilutes the votes of Irving's citizens, weighting each one differently based solely upon where he or she lives," the suit says.

The lawsuit touches upon two hot-button issues – single-member districts and illegal immigration – that for years have divided residents and officials in a city whose largest ethnic or racial group is Hispanic.

"We see this as a Constitutional issue, although we recognize that it could be seen as inflammatory in nature," said Kent D. Krabill, who is representing the 11 plaintiffs.

City attorney Charles Anderson said the city will fight the suit. Mayor Herbert Gears said the City Council probably will be briefed on the case next week.

"You know, of course, the plaintiffs have no knowledge of how this map was drawn," Gears said.

More than 40 percent of Irving's population is Hispanic. However, in court documents attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that 2000 Census figures indicate that 60 percent of the city's Hispanics are not citizens and are therefore ineligible to vote.

U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis ruled last year that Irving's former election system of only at-large council seats violated the Voting Rights Act because it effectively suppressed Hispanic votes. The judgment ended a years-long court battle that had divided the City Council, whose members are all white.

Irving and attorneys for Manuel Benavidez, the plaintiff in the Voting Rights Act case, agreed to settle the suit and proposed as a remedy a mixed system of six single-member and three at-large seats. Solis last week ordered the city to immediately begin using that system.

The new suit was randomly – and coincidentally – assigned to Solis on Thursday. It does not argue with Solis' finding of a Voting Rights Act violation.

The suit does not argue against single-member districts – just how Irving implemented them.

"We're not saying disregard the factors that were involved," Krabill said. "But we think the Supreme Court has said, although not clearly on this specific issue, that at the end of the day that the weight of the citizen's vote can't be made to depend on where they live."

City officials in recent years have simultaneously taken heat from residents who say the city doesn't do enough about illegal immigrants and residents who accuse police of racially profiling against Hispanics. Since 2006, the city has turned more than 5,400 arrestees over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. A vast majority of them have been Hispanic.

Bob Heath, who represented Irving in the Voting Rights lawsuit, said appeals courts have come to different conclusions about whether or how much weight citizenship should have when voting districts are drawn.

He represented Houston in a landmark case in which an appeals court ruled that whether population or citizenship is used should be left up to the political entity drawing the lines. The U.S. Supreme Court did not take the case on appeal, letting that previous ruling stand.

But Justice Clarence Thomas thought the court should have taken up the matter.

"The one-person, one-vote principle may, in the end, be of little consequence if we decide that each jurisdiction can choose its own measure of population," he wrote at the time. "But as long as we sustain the one-person, one-vote principle, we have an obligation to explain to States and localities what it actually means."

Plaintiffs in the case are Keith A. Lepak, former mayor Marvin Randle, Dan Clements, Dana Bailey, Kensley Stewart, Crystal Main, David Tate, Vicki Tate, Morgan McComb, Jacqualea Cooley and Joe Sissom. They all live in every single-member district except District 1.

The residents' lawsuit is being paid for by the nonprofit group Project on Fair Representation. That organization's director, Edward Blum, said he believes there has been enough debate and court precedent since the Houston case to warrant another look. Attorneys for the plaintiffs agreed.

"We think this narrow issue is one that's ripe for the courts to answer," Krabill said.


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