By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
December 6, 2024
In a decision that will prolong redistricting litigation that started in June 2023, the Anderson Common Council voted 7-2 Tuesday night to hire a consultant to redraw the council district map, so, councilors said, they could preserve the lone majority minority district.
The special meeting to discuss redistricting was convened more than two months after the Southern Indiana District Court ordered the common council and the Madison County Board of Elections to correct the city’s “unconstitutionally malapportioned” districts. At times tempers flared during the meeting, as Councilor Ollie Dixon, who claimed the goal of the litigation was “to eliminate … Black folks having a seat at the table,” advocated for the council to fight for the map he and two other councilors drew in the spring of this year.
Councilors had three options to consider. They could either follow Dixon and stick with his map, adopt the map drawn by the plaintiffs who brought the redistricting lawsuit, or hire an outside consultant to draw a new map altogether.
After the meeting, council President Lance Stephenson said the goal is to keep the majority-minority District 4 – which is Dixon’s district – and lower the population deviation between all of the districts to 10%, the level set by the federal courts in previous rulings. He conceded the map drawn by the consultant may look “very similar” to the map the plaintiffs submitted to the court but he added that the council wanted to maintain some control over the redistricting process.
“We are so diverse,” Stephenson said, explaining why the council wanted to preserve the majority-minority district. “That’s the beauty of Anderson and that needs to stay that way.”
The council and the election board were sued in June 2023 by Common Cause Indiana, the League of Women Voters of Indiana and the Anderson-Madison County branch of the NAACP for not redistricting after the 2020 U.S. Census. In fact, the council has not redrawn its districts since the 1980 census, according to reporting by the Anderson Herald Bulletin.
According to the court’s Sept. 30 order, granting summary judgment to the plaintiffs, the redistricting specialist for Common Cause calculated the council’s districts as having a total population deviation of 45.48%. That figure, the court noted, “far exceeds the 10% threshold,” which indicates a constitutional violation.
Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, disputed Dixon’s assertion about the plaintiffs wanting to dilute the minority vote. In an email, she said the new map offered by the plaintiffs adhered to the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection and included a district that would have strengthened the ability of Black voters in Anderson to elect their preferred candidate.
The first map drawn by the plaintiffs, she said, increased the Black voting age population in District 4 from the current 41.1% to 43.3%.
“Even after negotiations in which we changed the map to meet the demands of the council, our Black-opportunity district was still 41.3%, which is slightly higher than Dixon’s current district,” Vaughn said. “Councilmember Dixon is wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars to protect only his current political power — it has nothing to do with protecting the ability of Black voters in Anderson to select their preferred candidate,” Vaughn said.
The council did not discuss any potential consultants or consultant firms it could enlist to help draw a new map. Following the meeting, Stephenson said the council wants to bring the consultant on board in January, but he acknowledged this is a difficult time of year to make such a hire.
On the day of the council meeting, attorneys Steven Laduzinsky and Devlin Schoop of Laduzinsky & Associates in Chicago each filed motions with the federal court to withdraw from representing the council.
The identical motions said “irreconcilable differences have arisen between the Anderson Common Council and Attorneys Laduzinsky and Schoop.” Although the motions did not elaborate on the nature of the differences, Laduzinsky and Schoop argued their withdrawals would not harm the council, since the council’s attorney Rosemary Khoury is continuing to provide legal services.
Judge James Sweeney has not ruled on the motions.
Laduzinsky and Schoop joined the case in August 2023. They tried to get the lawsuit dismissed by arguing, in part, that the plaintiffs did not identify how the failure to redistrict had resulted in racial discrimination, which is required when making a claim under Section 2 of the National Voting Rights Act. The plaintiffs countered that they were not alleging an NVRA violation, but rather they were asserting the malapportioned electoral districts violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
In an October 2023 ruling, the federal court denied the motion to dismiss.
During the special meeting on Tuesday, the council did not talk about the attorneys’ request to withdraw from the case.
Much of the council’s discussion was dominated by Dixon. He assailed the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, saying they have “no right to come in and tell the city council (it has) to redistrict,” and claiming their goal is to tear down his district.
Dixon’s district, District 4, is the smallest with just 7,490 individuals, according to the plaintiffs’ lawsuit. However, he argued the current district map provides equal representation, giving Black voters a strong voice. Redrawing the council map to give each district an equal population, he said, would eliminate the ability of Blacks to elect the candidates they want.
“We deserve the right to choose somebody that we want to represent us,” Dixon said. “If (the plaintiffs are) successful in getting me, then we would not have one Black elected official in all of Madison County.”
When Dixon began recounting a phone call Stephenson had with now former Democratic state Rep. Terri Austin, Stephenson leaned forward and asked to be kept out of story.
“We’ve been supporting you this whole time,” Stephenson told Dixon at the meeting. “The reason we’re still dealing with this for a year is we all, every one of us here, agreed (to having a) minority majority (district).”
Stephenson also pointed out that the council approved the new district map that Dixon and councilors Greg Graham and Joe Newman, representing Districts 3 and 6 respectively, drew earlier this year. In a June meeting, the council voted unanimously to adopt the map, which did reduce the deviation to 18%. That map was never submitted to the federal court.
Dixon pressed Stephenson, asking why the council was again discussing the redistricting issue since it had already adopted a new map.
Stephenson replied, “Because our attorneys just quit on us. We need to make a decision so we can keep this going.”
Dixon continued trying to persuade his colleagues to fight for the map that he, Graham and Newman drew and appeal if the federal court rejects it.
When Dixon, again, asserted that the conversation about redistricting focused on population and “no one is aware of the racial complications,” at-large councilor Tiffany Harless interjected, “what do you mean by ‘no one’?” She began making the point that council members were considering race in the redistricting process, but Dixon talked over her and said he was fighting for his district.
Then District 2 councilor Jeff Freeman jumped in, asking if Dixon thought District 4 was more important than his district. “My people are less?” Freeman asked, contending the proposed maps were reconfiguring his district far more than Dixon’s district.
Khoury, the attorney in Madison County who is representing the council, advised the councilors that the federal judge would likely accept a map that was agreed to by both the council and the plaintiffs. However, she said, if the council submitted a map that was rebutted by the plaintiffs, then the judge would be more likely to reject it and possibly order a third party to draw a new map.
Freeman and Stephenson said having the judge choose the expert to draw the map was not a desirable option because the council would not have any input. The council, they said, would be stuck no matter what happens.
Five other councilors agreed with Freeman and Stephenson and voted to hire a consultant, rather than proceed with the map they had adopted in the summer. Of the three councilors who drew that map, Graham voted for the consultant, while Dixon and Newman voted to keep fighting for what the council had adopted.
In explaining her vote for enlisting the help of a consultant, Harless noted the new map needed to address both the race issue and the requirement that every person has one vote. Having one district overpopulated and another district underpopulated, she said, does not give the constituents an equal vote.
“Hiring a consultant does not relinquish our responsibility as a council to be able to conduct business where these maps are concerned and to add our input,” Harless said, “but it does give us support and evidence to be able to go before the court (and) to be able to say, ‘This is how we got to where we’re at and this is why we believe we are right.’”
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
