League of Women Voters of Illinois^®

LWVIL Files Suit on Redistricting Map

On Tuesday, August 16, 2011, the League of Women Voters of Illinois filed suit in federal court in Chicago seeking to overturn the recently-enacted General Assembly and Congressional district maps in Illinois.

“In a series of recent decisions the United States Supreme Court has upheld the First Amendment rights of corporations and wealthy candidates. Today we are asking a federal court in Chicago to uphold the First Amendment rights of the voters of Illinois. The longstanding Illinois practice of assigning voters to districts based on their political views and voting histories violates the First Amendment rights of our members and others throughout Illinois,”said LWVIL President Jan Dorner.

The gerrymandering that both political parties have engaged in for decades has resulted in districts so tilted to one political party or the other and so rigged to guarantee the re-elections of favored incumbents that voters in Illinois seldom have real choices in our elections. Our suit seeks to order the Governor and General Assembly to establish a new process for developing new legislative and Congressional districts through the selection of an impartial decision-maker or body that will ensure the least possible infringement on the First Amendment rights of the people of Illinois based on their political views, opinions, or beliefs.

The League of Women Voters of Illinois is represented in this matter by the Chicago law firm Despres Schwartz and Geoghegan Ltd. Full text of the lawsuit is here.

Lawsuit is revised and refiled on September 1, 2011. Revised suit is here.

Our Position in Brief:

Support for a redistricting process which is timely, orderly and meets the basic criteria relating to population, compactness and contiguity and the requirements of the 1965 U.S. Voting Rights Act and subsequent amendments.

Full Statement of Where We Stand on State Redistriciting

Additional Resources:

• Redistricting Issue Update — 2012 Issues Briefing (January 28, 2012)
• Redistricting Issue Update — 2011 Issues Briefing (February 5, 2011)
• Illinois General Assembly Redistricting Committees
• The League of Women Voters of Illinois is part of a statewide coalition working on issues related to redistricting. Check out the Illinois Campaign for Accountable Redistricting website.
• For an authoritative guide to the process of redistricting, including definitions, a state-by-state analysis and other valuable information, download The Citizens’ Guide to Redistricting, written and published by The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law: .