Kansas congressional redistricting trial begins with Wagle’s 2020 promise to Republicans
A trial to determine whether Kansas’s Republican-drawn congressional map is unconstitutionally gerrymandered opened Monday in Wyandotte County District Court, with a clash over then-Senate President Susan Wagle’s 2020 promise that the party could draw four GOP districts and oust Democratic U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids.
Attorneys for a group of Kansas voters suing to overturn the new district boundaries — which divide racially-diverse Wyandotte County and transfer Democratic-leaning Lawrence into a strongly Republican western district — launched their opening statements by playing a clip of Wagle’s remarks.
In her speech before a Wichita GOP club, Wagle said the Legislature could “draw four Republican congressional maps” but only if both chambers retained a GOP supermajority.
“They used the redistricting process as a power grab to silence Democratic and minority voters,” said Abha Khanna, an attorney with Elias Law Group. Elias Law Group is a firm that has represented Democrats in redistricting challenges nationwide.
Anthony Rupp, an attorney representing the state, said in his opening argument that Wagle is no longer in the Senate, having left office in early 2021 after not running for re-election. The former Republican Senate president played no role in crafting the new map, he said.
“She wasn’t involved,” Rupp said flatly.
The trial, before Judge Bill Klapper, is just one step in a lawsuit that is all but guaranteed to end with a decision by the Kansas Supreme Court. But it is still a crucial event in the Democrats’ fight against the boundaries, which they contend are racially and politically gerrymandered.
The map, which was approved along party lines over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto, splits Wyandotte County along Interstate-70.
The southern half of the county remains in the 3rd Congressional District, represented by Davids. The 3rd District stretches south through Johnson County and the more rural Franklin and Anderson counties.
The northern half of Wyandotte County is placed in the 2nd Congressional District represented by Republican Rep. Jake LaTurner.
The map also separates Lawrence from the rest of Douglas County combining the left-leaning college town with rural central and western Kansas.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they would show how the map dilutes the votes of minority voters and Democrats. They argued that the rights guaranteed under the Kansas Constitution are more robust than those offered by the U.S. Constitution. They said would show how the map violates the rights to equal protection and the right to vote offered in the state’s foundational legal document.
Mark Johnson, an attorney representing some of the plaintiffs, said the redistricting process played out “behind closed doors, out of public view.”
But attorneys for the state said lawmakers were acting within their authority when they passed the map and they noted that the Kansas Constitution offers no specific redistricting rules. They said lawmakers under the new Census numbers simply couldn’t keep all of Wyandotte and Johnson counties together in the 3rd District and that they chose to keep Johnson County whole.
“These are all Census-driven decisions,” Rupp said, who also said there is no evidence of racial intent in how lines were drawn.
He asked Klapper, a Democrat elected to the bench in 2014, not to “disenfranchise” the legislators elected to make decisions regarding redistricting.
The trial is expected to last three, possibly four days. At about 11:20 a.m., Klapper recessed court for lunch. Witness testimony is expected to begin Monday afternoon.
The Star’s Katie Bernard contributed to this report.
