Actually, I Do Believe There Is A Precedent . . . Response To Girdwood Plaintiff Filing

The following paragraph is the in the Girdwood Plaintiff filing of May 20, 2022 (pp.29-30)

"The Board argues that “since Section 11’s enactment in 1998, no Alaska court has

mandated the Board adopt any specific house or senate district[,]” and, in any event, the

superior court lacked the power to correct the Board’s error.106 The problem with the

Board’s argument is that the Alaska Constitution expressly contemplates in article VI,

section 11 that instances may arise where a court must exercise its mandamus power “to

correct any error in redistricting.”107 The fact that past courts have not needed to   

exercise their mandamus authority does not mean the constitutional remedy is 

unavailable; it merely means that no prior board has been so derelict as to require 

mandamus."

What is this about? 

(This is probably more than the average Alaskan cares or needs to know.)

The Girdwood plaintiffs had argued that given the June 1 deadline for candidates to file to run for the November 2022 election, there isn't time to give this back to the Board in hopes they will fix their error.  And thus it was okay for Judge Thomas Matthews to mandate - as he did in his decision - the the Board's Option 2 map be used for the 2022 election.  

The Board argued that the Court didn't have the authority to substitute its judgment for the Redistricting Board's judgment.  The Girdwood plaintiffs are arguing that, in fact, the judge does have the authority.  

I want to focus on the bolded sentence:

"The fact that past courts have not needed to exercise their mandamus authority . . ."

I want to point out that in 2012, the Courts, did, in fact, decide on what map options would be used in the 2012 election.  The Board had made a new map based on the Court's instructions, but then the Court decided to take part of that map and part of a prior map for use in the 2012 election.

I posted about this earlier.  I had thought that the original, unconstitutional map had been used for 2012 because a better map hadn't yet been approved.  But I went back and looked at my blog posts for the Redistricting Board for that round.  Here's my April 7, 2022 post looking at the old posts on this topic.

That posts lists a bunch of posts from that year regarding the appeals.  There are two that seem most relevant.  The May 7, 2012 post and the May 22, 2012 post which describes the decision.

May 7, 2012 

• The Supreme Court Substitutes Amended Proclamation for Redistricting Board's Interim Plan - Hearing Thursday 10am  

May 22, 2012

• Supreme Court Chooses Amended Proclamation Plan, With Original, Not New, SEast Districts -  Describes the court's decision. 

This May 22, 2012 post includes this paragraph:

"The court has accepted the Southeast districts as configured in the plan of April 5, 2012 rather than the reconfiguration submitted by the Redistricting Board to the court on May 14, 2012 because of the numerous objections to the reconfigured districts that this court has received.  While the reconfigured districts may comply with the redistricting criteria of article VI. section 6 of the Alaska Constitution, there is a risk that the United States Department of Justice would decline to pre-clear them under the Voting Rights Act.  Notice of the failure of the Department of Justice to pre-clear the new districts would come so late in the 2012 election cycle that a great disruption to the election process would result.  In order to avoid this possibility, the court will not require the use of the May 15, 2012 reconfigured districts for the 2012 elections." 

Now, I don't know if they invoked Mandamus here.  If not, then what happened is a little different from what the Girdwood plaintiffs are arguing.  What I do understand from this is that the court picked options from two different maps submitted by the Board at different times and that decision by the court was used for the 2012 election.  And then the Board was given everything back to come up with a better map.

That seems to me a clear example from the last redistricting round of what Judge Matthews has done this round.  He hasn't substituted his judgment for the Board's because what he has done is simply an interim plan for the 2022 election.  Instead, he's said, the Board's map (option 3B) is unconstitutional because of illegal gerrymandering.  So, rather than use an unconstitutional map for the 2022 election, I'm ordering the 2022 Option 2 map to be used.  For this election only, until the Board gives us a constitutional map.