City defends redistricting

Steve Sebelius

Wednesday, Feb. 12, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

The City Council considered the race of people living in West Las Vegas and the eastern part of the city when it redrew ward boundaries last year, but that wasn't the only consideration.

In court papers responding to a legal challenge to the new ward maps, city attorneys argued that the redistricting was legal, conducted properly and that elections scheduled for May should be allowed to go forward.

Beatrice Turner, who lives in Ward 1, and Alfred Gallego, a resident of Ward 3, are the plaintiffs in an NAACP-backed lawsuit that claims the district lines were drawn to pack all the city's minority voters into a single district.

Under the new map, predominantly black West Las Vegas and predominantly Hispanic eastern Las Vegas were put into Ward 3, prompting criticism from local minority groups who claimed the move was illegal.

In their court papers, Turner and Gallego attorney Dennis Leavitt and Glenn Schepps argue that placing minority voters in a single district to increase their voting clout is illegal under recent Supreme Court rulings.

"When a state assigns voters on the basis of race, it engages in the offensive and demeaning assumption that voters of a particular race, because of their race, think alike, share the same political interests and will prefer the same candidates at the (polls)," the lawsuit reads.

In response, Deputy City Attorney Philip Byrnes admits the city considered racial populations in drawing the district lines, but says it was done properly and was not the predominant factor in the process.

"The City Council followed traditional, race-neutral principles in setting district boundaries," the city's legal response reads. "Although race was considered, it was not the overriding factor in the reapportionment. It was merely one factor along with contiguity, compactness, population equality and geography."

What was the overriding factor, according to the suit, was a way to remedy the radical population shifts that had occurred in the city since the last remap, after the 1990 census. Wards 2 and 4 had grown much faster than Wards 1 and 3, prompting the council to act to equalize the populations in the four districts. Under the new maps, the populations are within the Supreme Court-sanctioned 10 percent, the city notes.

"Plaintiffs also cannot establish that race was the predominant factor in the districting plan. The plan was adopted primarily to equalize ward populations as a result of phenomenal growth in Wards 2 and 4," the city's motion reads.

Although the local chapter of the NAACP drew its own map showing how all four districts could be more equally redrawn -- but leaving West Las Vegas in Ward 1 -- the city contended in papers that the approved maps will allow Ward 3 to grow to the north and west in future redistricting with a minimum of disruption.

Turner and Gallego asked in their papers for a preliminary injunction to stop the May elections, but the city argued they should go forward, since neither Turner nor Gallego lives in Wards 2 or 4, where Councilmen Arnie Adamsen and Matthew Callister are up for re-election.

A hearing on the injunction request will take place Feb. 25 in District Court Judge Donald Mosley's courtroom.