KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Wyandotte County District Court judge ruled Monday that the Ad Astra 2 congressional maps are unconstitutional, tossing out the Kansas legislature’s attempt to split Wyandotte County and move Lawrence into a different congressional district.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt followed suit by appealing the ruling to the Kansas Supreme Court.
Democracy Docket posted a copy of the ruling Monday morning.
Three lawsuits challenging the maps — Faith Rivera, et al, vs. Scott Schwab, Tom Alonzo, et al, vs. Scott Schwab, and Susan Frick, et al, vs. Scott Schwab — were consolidated into one case.
Wyandotte County District Court Judge Bill Klapper issued a 209-page decision that found Ad Astra 2 unconstitutionally violates the plaintiffs’ collective rights through intentional and effective partisan gerrymandering as well as the intentional and effective dilution of minority voting rights in Wyandotte County.
“We live in a time where advancing one point of view is more important than creating a functioning government that serves all its citizens,” Klapper wrote.
Sharon Brett, Legal Director with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the maps are unconstitutional in more ways than one.
"The lines were drawn in such a way that democratic voters, particularly in the Kansas City metropolitan area and the city of Lawarence, would have their voices drowned out with non-democratic voters," Brett said. "The second way that we saw those lines being drawn was with regard to the minority population in Wyandotte county, a really heavily Black and Hispanic population, that the legislature basically drew a line straight through."
Proponents of Ad Astra 2 said they were not surprised.
"You have a Democrat-elected judge opining on the lines of a Republican-Democrat map, so there's just no surprise," Senator Ty Masterson, a Republican and the Kansas Senate President, said. "We are where we knew we'd be. And we're moving into the appeals process."
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt's office announced late Monday afternoon his office is appealing Klapper's decision to the state Supreme Court.
Klapper's ruling forbids Kansas “from preparing or administering any primary or general congressional election under Ad Astra 2” and orders the state legislature to “enact a remedial plan ... as expeditiously as possible.”
Klapper acknowledged the likelihood of appeal, noting that his decision will be reviewed by the Kansas Supreme Court, which “will have the final say.”
But he cited federal precedent, which has put forth guidelines against splitting Wyandotte County and Johnson as well as Lawrence and Douglas County in the past, in ruling against Ad Astra 2 constitutionality.
“This court suggests most Kansans would be appalled to know how the contest has been artificially engineered to give one segment of the political apparatus an unfair and unearned advantage,” Klapper wrote.
He ruled that Ad Astra 2 violates the equal protection clause of the Kansas Constitution by depriving “voters of substantially equal voting power.”
It also found the map unconstitutional for violating Kansas voting rights by disfavoring some residents based on viewpoint, rendering “political association an exercise in futility,” and disenfranchising certain residents because of how they tend to vote.
“The Court has no difficulty finding, as a factual matter, that Ad Astra 2 is an intentional, effective pro-Republican gerrymander that systemically dilutes the votes of Democratic Kansans,” Klapper wrote.
He went on to chastise the legislature for a rushed and secretive redistricting process — “an unprecedented departure from the ordinary legislative process” — and suggested the House and Senate Redistricting Committees’ listening tour was a sham that “was neither intended nor designed to obtain public input.”
"The way this Ad Astra 2 map was drawn, it would have disenfranchised individuals in northern Wyandotte County by including them in a very rural district," Rep. Stephanie Clayton, a Democrat on the House Committee on Redistricting, said. "It was really bad for the Kansas City area, so I was pleased to see it struck down."
Klapper agreed with plaintiffs in the case that the districts were redrawn with the goal of ensuring that Republicans would win all four congressional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Currently, both senators and three of four representatives from Kansas are Republicans. The lone exception is Rep. Sharice Davids who represents the 3rd District, which includes Johnson and Wyandotte counties.
Klapper ruled that the plaintiff’s expert witness testimony made it clear that “Ad Astra 2 runs roughshod over communities of interest for the purpose of securing maximum Republican advantage.”
The court found an expert’s testimony regarding the partisan nature of the Ad Astra changes in terms of population, partisanship and geographical compactness to provide “powerful evidence that Ad Astra 2 is an intentional, effective partisan gerrymander ... designed specifically to provide Republicans with the most advantageous congressional map possible.”
University of Michigan Political Science Professor and redistricting expert Dr. Jowei Chen’s analysis determined that Ad Astra’s treatment of the Kansas City area “was an extreme partisan outlier” in those districts and statewide, especially with respect to Shawnee and Lawrence as well as Topeka.
It ignores existing political cohesion.
Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte county have operated under a Unified Government since 1997 and Lawrence and Douglas County share a health department, but the new congressional map would split that territory for federal election purposes.
Ad Astra would move 112,661 Wyandotte County residents and 94,934 Lawrence residents to different districts — far and away the largest geographical areas affected by changes under Ad Astra 2.
Stanford University Political Science Professor Dr. Jonathan Rodden, a renowned political geography and redistricting researcher, determined that the legislature’s map fails to abide by its own redistricting guidelines for compactness, preservation of political subdivision (e.g. cities, counties, etc.) and retention of previous districts.
Importantly, Rodden’s analysis found that “Ad Astra 2 relocates more Black, Hispanic, and Native American Kansans” compared to alternatives — a form of gerrymander called “cracking,” which happens when non-compact districts are drawn to “divide geographically proximate minority communities.”
“Ad Astra 2 has high levels of racial dislocation,” Klapper concluded, relying on Rodden’s analysis. “Specifically, minority voters who live along the border of CDs (congressional districts) 2 and 3 in Wyandotte and Johnson Counties experience high levels of racial dislocation.”
Kansas has become an increasingly reliable GOP stronghold in the last two decades, according to University of Kansas Political Science Professor Dr. Patrick Miller, but the fact that a Democrat won three of the last five gubernatorial elections in the state shows the relative competitiveness within Kansas.
The map also leaves Lawrence “with effectively no opportunity to influence the district’s electoral outcomes,” which effectively would suppress voter turnout and engagement, according to the testimony of Emporia State University Political Science Professor Dr. Michael A. Smith.
On balance, the changes result in a map that’s “underrepresentative of the coverall partisan composition of Kansas.”
By moving half of Wyandotte County to the 2nd District, while also scooping Lawrence from the 2nd District and placing it in the heavily rural and Republican 1st District, the legislature passed a map that “leans so strongly Republican that the notes of Democratic-leaning and minority residents from Wyandotte are diluted to practical electoral irrelevance.”
ACLU filed suit in along with 2 other consolidated cases in efforts to block Ad Astra 2.
Brett also added that the if passed the approved maps would have broken performance in crossover districts.
"There is a large segment of black and Hispanic voters that vote alongside or vote in similar patterns with white voters in northern Johnson County and sort of those population combined creates what's called a crossover district," said Brett,"And what this map did was basically break that performing crossover district as we call it, in half, and then move half of it, in a district where there aren’t those same performing crossover voters." said Brett
KSHB 41 News spoke with voters about the news. Mary Bask, a long time resident and voter in Wyandotte, says she is glad the ruling was struck down.
"I was happy that the judge struck it down because I don’t think it's fair to us voters to tell us where to vote and how to vote," she said. "It's not fair to the minorities, it's not fair to anybody."
