Considering some of the lengthy decisions in past Redistricting cases, this one is just eight pages.
The Court ruled:
Senate District K (Eagle River/South Muldoon pairing) - unconstitutional gerrymandering remanded to be fixed by Board
House Districts 29,30, 36 (Mat-Su - Valdez pairing) basically left intact EXCEPT the Cantwell cutout must be repaired by the Board
Skagway/Mendenhall Valley House Pairing - not unconstitutional, left intact.
The Court did not address the issue of the importance the Board must give to public testimony - other than rejecting trial court's conclusion on Skagway.
The Court also did not directly address the issue of whether ANCSA boundaries can be used in redistricting maps, but the left the intact Districts 27, 38, 39, and 40 (some of which used ANCSA boundaries) and they did not except taking Cantwell out of the Denali Borough to be with other AHTNA villages. Though that was based on other issues.
[Note, I was having trouble getting the video segments to start and stop where I wanted, so while I'm leaving this up, I'm also making some changes. LATER: I think I've straightened it out. But I'll be revising through tomorrow if necessary.]
My last post organized my thoughts about the Supreme Court hearing for the redistricting board cases into three categories:
1. PRACTICAL/POLITICAL: WHAT WILL THE LEGISLATIVE MAP OF ALASKA LOOK LIKE FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS?
2. LEGAL: WHAT LEGAL PRINCIPLES ARE THE ATTORNEYS AND JUDGES DEBATING/WEIGHING AND HOW DO THEY IMPACT #1 AND FUTURE BOARDS?
3. PERSONAL: HOW DO THE SKILLS, STYLES, MOTIVATIONS, AND EXPERIENCES OF THE ATTORNEYS (AND TO SOME DEGREE, THE JUDGES) IMPACT THE DECISION MAKING?
I've realized a couple of things as I struggle to write the follow up posts:
While I've separated the three categories for clarity of discussion, they are very closely interwoven. You can't talk about one without the other two.
There are almost four hours of video tape to repeatedly review to start to get all the points
There's way too much content here for even hard core redistricting nerds to read and for this blogger to cover
What I really want to write about most is how the Board's attorney, Matt Singer, presented his case
Writing blog posts - on my own, without compensation - allows me to follow my personal interest and curiosity - the angle of the story that most calls out to me. No editor assigning stories (or correcting my typos) and no deadlines, except natural ones. Like getting comments on the trial out before the Supreme Court issues its decision. If I pair my passion with reason, you - the reader - get the best posts. My gut is telling me that the most interesting part of this case, the one that tells us the most, is the Board's attorney, Matt Singer.
Matt Singer is at the heart of this case. He has been the Board's attorney since early March 2021 when his firm was hired to represent the Board and he has since advised them on the law - constitutional, statutory, and case law. The Board used his advice to draw the maps, to guide them in and out of executive sessions, and on how to pair the Eagle River house districts into Senate districts.
And he's the attorney who has been in the spotlight in the Redistricting trials - being the face of the Board as he had to defend it against five different law suits, all with another attorney or more, in one combined case.
And he doesn't seem to be doing too well. I say this based on Judge Thomas Matthews' ruling on the case at the Superior Court level. And I say this based on the questions the Supreme Court justices asked him at the hearing there on Friday, March 18, 2022.
Law-splaining
I've been closely watching the Alaska Redistricting Board for about 15 months now. But it wasn't until after the trial, that it finally came to me that Matt Singer spends a lot of time "law-splaining." This is the legal variation of 'mansplaining.'
"Mansplaining—when a man talks condescendingly to someone (especially a woman) about something he has incomplete knowledge of, with the mistaken assumption that he knows more about it than the person he's talking to does."
Those key points again:
condescendingly
about something he has incomplete knowledge of
with the mistaken assumption he knows more about it than the person he's talking to
All three of these apply to Singer's performances in the trials. I didn't quite pin it down during the trial, though I did comment in a post after his colleague Lee Baxter represented the Board on a couple of occasions. I wrote:
"I finally figured out why it's so tedious to listen to him at trial. There's a smugness in his voice. Disdain. He knows the truth and he sounds like he's tired of having to correct all the plaintiffs' errors. That this all is a waste of his time. (A lucrative waste.) I didn't figure this out until the Calista case today when Lee Baxter took the role of the Board's lawyer. In contrast, he sounds respectful and sincere as he tries to counter the plaintiff's arguments."
So, at least, the condescending part was pretty clear then. [I'm having trouble embedding the part of the video I want. But it starts at the beginning, so you should listen until he gets to calling Judge Matthews decision absurd. Then stop and read. After that you can then play the next few minutes as the judges ask Singer questions.] [I now seem to have got it right and it should stop there on its own and the second section of the video is below.]
He begins by talking about the court's 'usurpation of the power of the board.'
Then he tells us
"The first error the trial court made" was in recasting the core role and purpose of the Board. In Judge Matthews' interpretation, the Board has no special expertise to make redistricting decisions because its members need only be Alaska residents for one year. Based primarily on the absence of a longer residency requirement the trial court opined that the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution compels the Board to adopt a number of equally constitutional plans and then let the public have a say after which the Board must follow the public's bidding unless doing so would be illegal. This court has repeatedly said over decades that it will not substitute its judgment for that of the Board. It's said that its role is to evaluate the plan adopted by the Board, not plans that were possible or preferred. Implicit in that standard of review is a recognition that the Board and its members have judgement. They get to exercise judgment. The trial court's reasoning that it should not exercise its own judgment because the Constitution does not require a longer residency is also factually absurd.
Then he goes on to discuss how the Board appointments are made. And describes the members as having 200 years of collective experience in Alaska.
So, let's first look at the parts marked in red. This is just the beginning of Mr. Singer's morning before the court. He starts out talking about "the first error the trial court made." OK, this doesn't sound too bad, but he is unequivocally telling the Supreme Court justices that one of their brethren judges has made a number of errors (he'll enumerate others down the line.) and ends this opening by saying the trial court's conclusion is 'absurd.' The parts in red deal with the "condescendingly" part of mansplaining.
I get that it's the attorney's job to point out errors in his opponent's argument. But it helps
if you focus on the argument, not the person,
if you do it with a little more grace and respect.
if the person you complain about actually did what you said he did.
Singer does none of these. Absurd is a strong word. Dictionary.com defines it this way:
"utterly or obviously senseless, illogical, or untrue; contrary to all reason or common sense; laughably foolish or false"
He's saying that Judge Thomas Matthews was utterly senseless, illogical, contrary to all reason or common sense, laughably foolish!
There are times when 'absurd' is appropriate. This is not one of them. Mainly because the judge never said what Singer alleges. He never said, "The Board must do the public's bidding."
And he's saying this to the judge's judicial brethren. It's like bad-mouthing your former employer in a job interview with your potential new employer. It can't make a good impression.
Moving to the blue now. Judge Matthews did say that the Constitution assumes that the Board members don't have special expertise because they're only required to have one year's residency. But he didn't say that this Board has no expertise. He didn't say the board 'has to do the public's bidding' because of the one year residency requirement.
In fact, Mr. Singer cherry picks one idea and takes it out of context to reach conclusions that grossly mischaracterize what trial court Judge Matthews actually wrote.
Judge Matthews spent a lot of time discussing the role of public testimony and how the Board is to consider it. He never says that the Board should simply adopt the majority opinion of the public testimony. Rather, he concludes the Board shouldn't substitute its own personal preferences when they are contrary to the overwhelming majority of public testimony. Rather than using personal preferences, the judge wants to hear how the facts of each district fit the criteria. And if the Board feels it must override the overwhelming public testimony, they need to document why. In this case, the board didn't do that.
In this section of his ruling, he reviews the minutes of the Constitutional Convention, Judge Matthews quotes Delegate Hellenthal (I've only copied part of Hellenthal's statement below):
click to enlarge and focus
I doubt Mr. Singer has been asking himself Delegate Hellenthal's question: "What can I do to help the greater good of the State?" Rather, it seems he's been asking, "How can I win this case?" And that is his job in court. But I don't think he was thinking about the greater good of the State when he was advising the Board either.
Then he reviews how past Supreme Court cases discussed the role of public testimony:
And I know this is more than most of you want to know, but I want to emphasize that Judge Thomas Matthews worked hard to find guidance in making his decision. This isn't just Judge Matthews' perception of how it should. He's based his conclusions on what the writers of the Constitution discussed at the Constitutional Convention, what the final and amended versions of the Constitution say, and what the Alaska Supreme Court has said over the decades. He continues.
Finally, he apples all this to this case.
The blue parts here show the other two aspects of mansplaining - "about something he has incomplete knowledge of" and "with the mistaken assumption he knows more about it than the person he's talking to"
So, what Singer calls 'absurd' is really based on an allegation that Singer himself makes up (known in logic circles as 'a straw man') and is not to be found in Judge Thomas Matthews' ruling.
Now, moving along to the next part of this video - and this is just about six minutes of the almost four hour session, of which Singer was on almost half the time - I'll let you watch as the judges themselves question Singer's assertions.
There is one point I would make. Throughout the redistricting process, Singer has told the Board that the Courts had found that anywhere within a Borough boundary was socio-economically integrated with any other place within the Borough. That was his mantra throughout the the process. Board members - particularly Bethany Marcum - have repeated it as gospel.
During the trial, after hearing Valdez and Skagway attorney Robin Brena citing the old cases, I had to go back and look at them carefully and realized they were not nearly as blunt as Singer represented to the Board. There was much more nuanced discussion about the needs of having people's interests represented in the legislature. I posted what I found here and here.
The justices question Singer over these points. For example: Does that (all parts of a Borough are socio-economically integrated) mean that the court can't consider gerrymandering within Anchorage?
I'd also mention that in this section of the video, Singer claims that the South Muldoon district wasn't hurt by pairing it with Eagle River because it's 57% white and it votes Republican two-thirds of the time. The judges don't address that, so I would point out here:
57% white in South Muldoon is very different from the Eagle River districts which are among the whitest districts in Alaska - in the 90% range.
Voting Republican two-thirds of the time means they vote Democratic one-third of the time, while the Eagle River districts NEVER vote Democratic.
There are different types of Republicans. Eagle River elects Republicans like like Lora Reinbold and Jamie Allard - both extreme Right anti-maskers who are cozy with White Nationalists. And in comparison to Allard, one of Eagle River's Anchorage Assembly members, East Anchorage is represented in the Assembly by Forrest Dunbar and Pete Peterson, both Democrats, both former Peace Corps volunteers, and strong advocates for masking and LGBTQ rights and other progressive values.
When the 2011 Board paired an East Anchorage seat with Eagle River, it effectively ended the state Senate career of Alaska's (then) only black Senator, Bettye Davis, who was beaten soundly by Eagle River voters
Again, Singer is totally mischaracterizing the situation and it sounds like the Justices aren't buying it.
I think I've made my point here. I could challenge Singer's comments throughout the hearing like this. But I'd never finish this post. But he continues throughout the hearing to mischaracterize what Judge Matthews actually said.
I'd note (in relation to mansplaining point 3 - 'mistaken assumption he knows more than the person he's talking to - that Singer (and all the other attorneys last Friday) are citing court cases to three of the judges who helped to write those cases. Judge Warren Matthews - not to be confused with trial Judge Thomas Matthews - was appointed to the Alaska Supreme Court in 1977 and has heard all the redistricting board cases since the 1983 case , including the 1992 (Hickel) case, the 2002 case, the 2012 case and the current 2022 case. Judge Robert Eastaugh was appointed in 1984 and served on the redistricting cases in, 2002 and the current case. And Judge Daniel Winfree served on the 2011 case as well as the current one.
I think if I were an attorney, I would let the judges know how intimidating it was to be citing the law that they - particularly Justice Matthews - had been writing and interpreting for 40 years.
I'd also note that Justices Matthews and Eastaugh are no longer on the Supreme Court and are serving as Senior Justices replacing two judges who recused themselves.
I'd make one more observation about how Singer is different from some of the key attorneys of the plaintiffs.
Singer appears to be less about upholding "the greater good of the State" than he is about winning his case. He's had the Board in lengthy Executive Sessions that seemed to me - and to plaintiffs and the judge - to violate the open meetings act. He even gave them their initial overview of the state law and court cases on redistricting in a closed meeting. (The previous redistricting board attorney did that in public.)
His most successful strategies in the court case, haven't been based on theories of law, but have been ways to block access to documents that plaintiffs wanted. Even transcripts from the Board's meetings in early November 2021 weren't available until late January or early February 2022, right before the trial started. (Even though during the trial transcripts were available right after the day's session.) Yes, the Board's staff got the video of the meetings up by the next day for most meetings. But going through a video takes much more time than going through a transcript. And that was due to Executive Director Peter Torkelson's vision and hard work to make sure the public got as much information as was possible.
The email and text communications among Board members were not available until the day before trial. That made it hard for them to be used in trial.
He also had Board members refuse to respond in depositions and he didn't call the Board's Voting Rights Act expert to be a witness, depriving the plaintiffs the opportunity to cross examine him - which was critical in the East Anchorage case.
So, blocking the plaintiffs from getting information they needed for their cases was his most successful action as an attorney. But I also have to acknowledge that this trial made him sort of like a chess player playing five opponents simultaneously. And perhaps he knows his case is weak and that's why he's doing what he's doing.
But, if his case is weak, in part that's due to the advice he gave his client. At least two of the Board members strongly and publicly objected to the Board's final decision on the Eagle River pairings, so maybe the Board didn't listen to his advice there. Singer's advice to the Board about socio-economic integration and Boroughs, though, was fairly simplistic and in part is why we're in court now.
However, I'm not going to guess what the outcome of the this case will be. I'm not a regular Alaska Supreme Court observer and I don't know how judicial questioning of attorneys correlates with their ultimate decisions.
I'll try to get another post up about the legal concepts and how they could affect future cases.
I would note that if the Court remands the Skagway and Anchorage decisions back to the Board, and the Board dilly-dallies long enough, the current 2021 proclamation map would be used in the November election - including the Eagle River Senate Pairings and Skagway-Juneau House districts that Judge Thomas Matthews has told the Board to redo. [Aug 1, 2022 - this turns out not to be true as a wrote in a later post. The Court can order changes to an interim plan if it chooses. It did that in 2012.]
And there could still be more lawsuits when the Board finalizes that map.
[March 26, 2022: The Supreme Court rendered its ruling yesterday. You can see it on this post. While Singer lost the fight over the Eagle River Senate pairings, he won the Skagway case. Another change the Supreme Court is requiring (though the trial court didn't) is putting Cantwell back into the Denali Borough.]
There is one indisputable fact that came out of the hearing on Friday, March 18, 2022. The Chief Justice told everyone that they will have a decision by April 1, 2022. I'm guessing it will be made before that because it's generally a good idea not to announce significant decisions on April Fool's Day. So I have about ten days to offer my thoughts on what happened in trial prior to the decision.
In this post I'm going to outline how I'm organizing my comments. (It took a while to even get to this point.)
In the meantime, go look at James Brooks' overview in today's Anchorage Daily News. With the benefit of a deadline and an editor, he's been able to write on what the trial was about. And it's a good starting point. I've got several false starts for posts and I'm trying to figure out where to grab hold of this story.
Alaska Supreme Court Judges Walking Into the Chamber
Basically there are several stories.
1. PRACTICAL/POLITICAL: WHAT WILL THE LEGISLATIVE MAP OF ALASKA LOOK LIKE FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS?
There are 40 house districts and 20 senate districts (made up of two house districts each). There were five law suits challenging the board's maps.
The 'East-Anchorage' plaintiffs challenged the pairing of the South Muldoon district with an Eagle River district into one Anchorage Senate seat, arguing the were paired this way by the Board to give conservatives in Eagle River an extra Senate seat at the expense of a district being called 'south Muldoon.' Changing that pairing will also affect a second Senate seat.
The Skagway plaintiffs challenged the Board decision to put them in a House district with the Mendenhall Valley in Juneau instead of with downtown Juneau with which they are much more 'Socio-Economically Integrated' (SEI). SEI is one of the Alaska constitutional requirements for districts.
Judge Thomas Matthews, the Superior Court judge who heard the challenges during round one, agreed and ruled that the Board should go back and fix these two. The Board has appealed these decisions, so everyone is back in court to argue their points before the Supreme Court.
Matsu-Su and Valdez both challenged District 29 in which they were paired. They argued they are not SEI and that the Board didn't seriously consider them until all the other districts were completed and so they just got shoved into one unconstitutional district.
Calista Corporation challenged how several villages in Western Alaska and asked the court to swap some villages between the two districts.
Judge Matthews did NOT ask the Board to make changes in these cases, but Mat-Su and Valdez both appealed the decision.
Calista is NOT appealing the decision but is arguing before the court that ANCSA boundaries should be legitimate factors to consider in redistricting.
2. LEGAL: WHAT LEGAL PRINCIPLES ARE THE ATTORNEYS AND JUDGES DEBATING/WEIGHING AND HOW DO THEY IMPACT #1 AND FUTURE BOARDS?
This is the section that is slowing me down the most. I've got a couple of important issues on my list so far are:
The Hard Look Doctrine - If this came up in trial, or even Judge Matthews' ruling, I missed it. I'm guess I took the words 'hard look' literally and just didn't know that that is a legal principle that sets up standards for the way the Board makes their decision. Basically, as I understand this, the court is to not simply defer to whatever decision a government agency or board makes, but to take 'a hard look' at how they made it. Both the East Anchorage and Skagway attorneys are pushing this and the judge agreed. The Board seems to be saying this may be a standard for permanent federal agencies, but it's too high a standard for a temporary board with few staff.
Skagway attorney Robin Brena listed key points for evaluating a decision:
Deliberation - have to engage the evidence before you decide
Transparency - have to be transparent in deliberation on why Board took decision
Rational - treat like situations the same. (They can't emphasis one criterion (say compactness over Socio-Economic Integration) for one district and then switch emphasis for another)
Evidenciary propriety - have to explain and apply evidence before them
[I need to go back and review my notes and the video and the briefs so I get this right - the four points above are from my notes in the courtroom.]
The Role of Public Testimony - I think this actually falls under the Hard Look Doctrine - it seems to be relevant to all four points just mentioned. Judge Matthews pointed out in his ruling that since the Constitution requires 60 days of public testimony, there's an implication there that the testimony shouldn't be ignored. The Board argues that Matthews is saying that the Board must substitute the majority of public testimony for the Board's own reasoning and that this will result in political parties packing the hearings and getting followers to send in testimony.
Should ANCSA boundaries be used when making districts? While Calista is not contesting Judge Matthews' decision, they are asking the Court to rule that ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act} boundaries can be used in redistricting - particularly in unincorporated boroughs. I have some questions about this, though no firm opinions. I just don't know. But there was only one party arguing for this and no counter arguments so I hope the judges act cautiously on this until it's clear what the impact might be. It's important that Alaska Native voices are heard and respected by redistricting boards. But I also have unanswered questions about the role of for-profit Native corporations in this process.
These are the key issues I've got picked out so far, but there may be more
3. PERSONAL: HOW DO THE SKILLS, STYLES, MOTIVATIONS, AND EXPERIENCES OF THE ATTORNEYS (AND TO SOME DEGREE, THE JUDGES) IMPACT THE DECISION MAKING?
This is probably the easiest category for most people to understand. In the trial (and pre-trial) process, it became clear that the individual attorneys representing the plaintiffs and the board play a big factor in which way the decisions fall. Without understanding these dynamics the public is missing out on a key factor that influences the decisions. I have developed some thoughts on some of the attorneys and I want to write about this in a way that is reasoned, is backed with evidence, and isn't just a gossip session.
I would note that throughout the trial and again Friday, the Board's attorney, Matt Singer, had to participate in every part of the trial. He had to defend the Board in all five cases against the Board. (Mat-Su and Valdez were paired together, but each had its own attorneys.) During pre-trial meetings, he could make a point, but then there were a bunch of other attorneys to challenge that point and to back each other up. They all had time to think through what was said, but he was essentially 'on' all the time. That is a heavy burden. Intervening attorney, Nathaniel Amdur-Clark, did argue for the Board, so Singer had a bit of backup.
I'm still digesting the various arguments made and questions asked by the justices. Not ready yet to post an overview, let alone my reactions. But I do have this bit of video I made with Alaska Redistricting Board Chair John Binkley after the trial, still in the courtroom.
I'll let the video speak for itself.
[Note: I haven't posted my own videos much lately. iMovie on my laptop changed and I just got out of practice. It seems a bit easier than it was. I also have really slow internet at home so uploading takes forever. I had to go over to UAA to get reasonable internet speed to upload it. I had edited out the extra subtitles, but I must have uploaded the wrong version to YouTube. I'll leave it up for now since I'd have to upload it to YouTube again. Sorry.]
My sense is that those who have been following the Redistricting Board and the Superior Court challenges won't have trouble following the arguments tomorrow. For others, giving quick overviews here isn't easy. I have tried to do that with some of the cases in earlier posts.
Key information: 9am at the Alaska Supreme Court Friday March 18, 2022 9am. Much easier (since they are limiting the gallery to 50 people) is to watch it live at www.ktoo.org/gaveland .
You particularly want to look at the Responses (Numbers 33-40). These are the arguments of the different parties.
33 - State of Alaska - The State isn't arguing for against the maps or the judge's decisions about the maps. The State has two concerns here:
1. That the precedent set by the Court regarding the importance of listening to what the public has to say ("if you didn't intend to listen to what the public said, why hold all the hearings?). The State is making an argument that that only applies to the Redistricting Boards and not other state boards.
2. Also, the Court's decisions about attorney-client privilege and the Open Meetings Act should also only apply to the Redistricting Board and not other State Boards.
34 - Matsu-Susitna Borough - challenged (along with Valdez) District 29 which put Valdez in with Palmer and Wasilla suburbs. Matsu-Susistna makes its points easy to read.
The Court "requires remand to the Board to comply with the Constitution'
Agreement with the Court's finding of violations of the Open Meeting Act
Court was correct in its determinations regarding discovery
35 - Alaska Redistricting Board - Defending its decisions and challenging the conclusions of Judge Mathews they disagree with and supporting those they agree with
36. City of Valdez - See comments below.
37. Municipality of Skagway - Agreeing with the judge on public input and disagreeing with the judge that Skagway is Socio-Economically Integrated with the Mendenhall Valley.
38. Felisa Wilson - This is the Anchorage case that challenged the pairing of the two Eagle River House seats with Muldoon in one Senate seat and JBER and downtown Anchorage in another Senate seat. The judge ruled in their favor and the Board is challenging that. This is a harder case to follow because it focuses on violations of principles of law such as due process, arguing that the Board went from transparent and then when it came time for Senate pairings it went opaque. It argues that the East Anchorage plaintiffs couldn't make their case stronger because the Board withheld information until the very last minute - some of that including racial data about the voters in the Muldoon district. As an observer of the Board and then the trial, it clearly appeared to me that the Board's strategy at the trial was to stall and delay. See this January 19 post: AK Redistricting Pre-Trial Hearing - Board Strategy Is Clear And Working.
39. Doyon Limited - Doyon led a coalition of Native Corporations in monitoring the Redistricting Board throughout the process, including creating their own proposed redistricting map. The were pretty successful in getting all the Doyon and Ahtna villages into one district - 36. They are here to defend District 36, particularly against Valdez' claims that the Board put Native Corporation goals ahead of the Constitutional requirements for creating the districts.
Second reminder: These were very quick grabs from the documents. You can look at them yourselves for more details. I'm sure all the attorneys would be rolling their eyes at my very brief takes.
You can skim through these at the link. But here's a little more depth into the Valdez case.
Valdez - The basic argument seems to be that by committing strongly to the Doyon plan to get all the Doyon villages into one district (the new 36), the Board a) used a non constitutional criterion (getting all of Doyon together) and b) caused Valdez to be in a district that it is not socio-economically integrated with.
Basically they say that the focus on creating a "Doyon District" resulted in a district that is not compact, not SEI (socio-economically integrated). And the impact on Valdez was to put it into a district that had serious problems. Thus, by using nonconktititonal criteria (getting all the Doyon villages together into D-36), the Board ended up with an unconstitutional Valdez district (29).
There's more detail, but that's the biggest argument. And it's pretty clear that there was a lot of pressure to do that. Doyon had a group of Native Corporations and money to create their own alternative map. And Doyon attorney Tanner Amdur-Clark was allowed to act as an Intervenor attorney during the trial. That is not to say that there is anything wrong with wanting to get all the Doyon (and Ahtna) villages into one district. But that is not one of the constitutional requirements for putting the districts together. Attorney Brena is trying to convince the Supreme Court that by locking in District 36, the Board created
an unnecessarily large (not Compact) district
a district that was not Socio-Economically Integrated (even though it has all those Native villages, the population is 70% non-Native) and
Put Valdez into a district which in which it has serious conflicts and thus whose interests in the legislature would be overwhelmed by Mat-Su portion of the district
[Note: I scanned the brief fairly quickly, but I read the conclusions more carefully. I'm just trying to give readers what stood out to me as the main thrust of the argument. You can read it for yourself in the link below.]
The Board chose to prioritize the nonconstitutional goals of its individual members
over the consistent application of the constitutional requirements throughout the
redistricting process. Time-and-again the Board deferred to the priorities of the individual member from the geographic area under discussion. This is simply not the constitutional process the Board is required to undertake, and, as a result, the process failed to produce constitutionally compliant outcomes.
The Board set aside its constitutional obligations to establish compact and socio-economically integrated districts when it prioritized the nonconstitutional goal ofcreating a “Doyon” or “Doyon-Ahtna” district (District 36). The Board’s favored treatment of the Native voters in these villages, which constitute less than 30 percent of District 36, over all other voters cannot possibly survive constitutional scrutiny.
The Doyon district is not compact. It would be the third-largest state in our union. It is not so large because Alaska is a vast state with low population densities, as may sometimes justify a larger district, but because the Board set aside the constitutional requirements for establishing house districts and instead decided to (1) establish VRA [Voting Rights Act] districts early in the process in direct violation of the Hickel process, locking in portions of the Doyon district’s boundaries; (2) inconsistently and arbitrarily apply ANSCA boundaries to artificially separate Native villages along the lower Yukon drainage, while ignoring other ANSCA boundaries altogether; (3) form a noncompact horseshoe shape around the population of Fairbanks in an effort to keep Fairbanks intact in deference to Chair Binkley; and (4) establish and advance a goal of maximizing the voting power of far-flung Native villages (that are currently in four different districts) by combing them into a single district, even though the district was over 70 percent non-Native. The Board then further violated compactness by adding two strange appendages to capture 30 Ahtna shareholders in Cantwell and to capture the predominately non-Native population of Glennallen, breaking two borough boundaries in the process.
The Doyon district is also not relatively socio-economically integrated. There is no substantive or creditable evidence in the record suggesting the communities along the lower Yukon and those along the Richardson Highway are relatively socio-economically integrated at all, much less to the maximum degree practicable.
Since statehood, every governor and board has properly applied the constitutional standards of article VI, section 6 to place Valdez in a house district with the Richardson Highway communities, with the Prince William Sound communities, or with both. The Board in this case has orphaned the voters of Valdez from their closest neighbors and placed them completely in a district with voters with whom they do not work, live, or share common concerns. The Board took this action as a default in order to achieve thenonconstitutional goals it had already committed to achieve.
The Board’s actions ignored the public process, which overwhelmingly suggested Valdez should not be districted, let alone exclusively paired, with the Mat-Su Borough. The public process yielded voluminous and near unanimous comments in favor of Valdezbeing placed with the people its voters live, work, and share common interests with along the Richardson Highway, as it has been for decades, in what has been framed by the courts as “the most strongly integrated economic corridor in the state, the pipeline corridor, the Richardson Highway corridor from the south region of the North Star Borough to Valdez.”274
Rather than ensuring District 29 met the constitutional requirements for a house district, the Board chose to protect its nonconstitutional priorities and reach out to everyone it could for justification supporting pairing Valdez exclusively with the Mat-Su Borough for the first time in history. In doing so, the Board stretched this Court’s prior authority beyond recognition and advanced theories that diminish if not entirely abrogate the limitations to the Board’s discretion set forth in article VI, section 6 of the Alaska Constitution.
The Board did not map, much less look hard at establishing (1) a Richardson Highway house district; (2) a Valdez, Seward, and Kodiak house district by shifting 274 In re 2011 Redistricting Cases, 2013 WL 6074059 at *13 (emphasis added).
Cordova into Southeast; or (3) an Anchorage and Valdez house district. The Board chose not to even look at the maps already prepared by Member Marcum because they would require modification to the VRA districts and Doyon district in order to form a Richardson
Highway or Prince William Sound district. In addition, the Board discouraged Member Marcum from mapping an Anchorage and Valdez district altogether. Any of these alternatives would have resulted in more compact and socio-economically integrated house districts throughout Alaska, which the Board could have considered if they had properly and consistently applied the constitutional requirements. This Court should enforce these requirements and remand this matter back to the Board for consistent application when evaluating the viable alternatives it chose not to consider for the voters of Valdez.
Some of the parties that have filed briefs (Calista and the State of Alaska) have done to support or oppose concepts raised in this case. Calista is arguing against Valdez' argument that ANCSA boundaries are not appropriate to use for redistricting. ???? And the State of Alaska is arguing that the broader than normal interpretation of the importance of listening to the public ruling by Judge Matthews should not be extended to other public bodies. (Check if there are other issues)
Calista is not challenging the judge's decision about the Calista region and the State is not advocating one way or the other about the maps, or even the Judge's standard for listening to public testimony for redistricting.
Back in February, March 18 seemed a long way off, but today I realized it was only two days away. It's not like I hadn't checked the Supreme Court website. I had. But there were several different listings under the Redistricting Case. I checked one or two and the only documents I could find were from February 17, 2022, about five.
Well, I should have tried them all - they've been consolidated into S-18332. There I found 51 documents - the latest was put up yesterday March 15, 2022.
I've got things downloaded. A lot are short administrative documents - asking for more time or permission to go over the page limits and then responses from the Court. Others are the much longer arguments of the various parties. Those I'll look through tomorrow.
Meanwhile, here are some excerpts from the Court's orders that apply to the actual hearing on Friday that might be of interest to readers.
All petitions and responses will be assigned SupremeCourt Case No. S-18332.
Oral argument will be held on Friday, March 18, 2022 at 9:00AM. Argument is expected to take place in-person in Anchorage, although capacity for in-person attendance may be limited in order to allow social distancing. The argument will be live streamed on www.ktoo.org/gaveland remote viewing is encouraged. The time allowed for each side to argue will be announced in a separate notice following the submission of the parties’ written arguments.
The Court will strictly adhere to the time limits set forth above.
Oral argument will be held before the Supreme Court on 3/18/2022 beginning at 9:00 AM as follows
9:00AM – 10:00AM: Alaska Redistricting Board’s petition for review regarding Senate District K. 30 minutes per side: Redistricting Board and East AnchoragePlaintiffs
10:15AM – 11:15AM: Alaska Redistricting Board’s petition for review regarding House District 3 and Municipality of Skagway’s petition for review regarding HouseDistricts 3 & 4. 30 minutes per side: Redistricting Board and Municipality of Skagway..
11:30AM – 12:50PM:Matanuska-Susitna Borough’s & City of Valdez’s petitionsfor review regarding House Districts 29, 30, and 36. 40 minutes total for the Borough& City (20 min each, absent different agreement); 40 minutes total for RedistrictingBoard, Doyon Intervenors, and Calista Parties to divide by agreement.
So, East Anchorage (Muldoon-Eagle River pairing) goes first.
Then Skagway.
Then Mat-Su and Valdez
I still have to decide if I want to try to get into the courtroom or watch online. In a lot of ways, online has been much easier for many things. And if I can't get in because there are too many people, I'd have to hustle home to listen on line and I wouldn't want to miss anything.
Zelensky's been the world's superhero lately, but I want to point out that there are other young new heads of state with a strong progressive agenda.
Gabriel Boric became Chile's president on Friday. Here's some video and below an English translation of his inaugural address.
Here's an Al Jazeera video that gives some background on the new president.
The video below shows him addressing the nation from the presidential palace in Santiago.
Here's a link to the speech in Spanish. And below is a Google translation. [Google translate has improved enormously over the years, but still has some quirks. It starts out in Spanish "S.E. el presidente ..." which Google translated as "I know the president . . ." OK, 'se' means I know, but that makes no sense. My consultant said it means "Su excelencia" or "His excellency." I'll let you make your own adjustments along the way.]
I KNOW. the President of the Republic, Gabriel Boric Font, makes his first presidential message and greets the citizens present in the Plaza de la Constitución.
Chilean men and women, inhabitants of our country, people of Chile:
This afternoon, for the first time, I speak to you as President of the Republic, President of all of us who inhabit this country that we love so much and how much we love Chile, which has suffered so much and has given us so much joy.
Infinite thanks for giving me this honor to you, to those who are seeing us in their homes throughout our country. Also, to my unconditional family, to our Cabinet, our teams and, also, personally to Irina.
This Chile made of diverse peoples and nations, installed on a cornice of the continent between the imposing mountain ranges and its magical ocean, between the desert of life and the Antarctic ice, enriched and transformed by the work of its people.
It is this Chile that in just a handful of years, and you have lived through it, has had to go through earthquakes, catastrophes, crises, convulsions and a global pandemic and human rights violations that will never be repeated in our country. But in which we always, always dust ourselves off, dry our tears, rehearse a smile together, roll up our sleeves and continue, Chilean men and women, we always continue.
The emotion that I have felt today when crossing the Plaza de la Constitución and entering this Palacio de La Moneda is deep and I need, existentially, I need to share it with you. You are a leading part of this process, the people of Chile are leading in this process, we would not be here without your mobilizations.
And I want you to know that we did not come here just to fill positions and entertain each other, to generate unattainable distances, we came here to give ourselves body and soul to the commitment to make life better in our country.
I want to tell you, compatriots, that I have seen your faces touring our country, those of the elderly whose pension is not enough to live on because some decided to make pensions a business.
Those of those who get sick and their families do not have how to pay for the treatments. How many of you have spoken to us, we have looked into each other's eyes.
Those of the indebted students, those of the peasants without water due to drought and looting.
Those of the women who care for their children with ASD that I find in every place in Chile. To their bedridden relatives, to their defenseless babies.
Those of the families who are still looking for their disappeared detainees, which we will not stop looking for.
Those of the dissidences and gender diversities that have been discriminated against and excluded for so long.
Those of the artists who cannot live from their work because culture is not valued enough in our country.
Those of the social leaders who fight for the right to decent housing in the populations of Chile.
Those of the native peoples stripped of their land, but never, never of their history.
Those of the harassed middle class, those of the children of Sename, never again, never again, the faces of the most isolated areas of our country like Magallanes where I come from, those of those who live in forgotten poverty.
With you is our commitment.
Today we begin a period of great challenges, of immense responsibility, but we are not starting from scratch, we are not starting from scratch. Chile has a long history and today this day inserts us into that long history of our Republic.
Starting my mandate as Constitutional President of the Republic of Chile is to become part of a history that exceeds us all, but at the same time gives it shape, gives meaning and direction to our gaze.
Thousands of people passed through here before us who made possible the expansion of public education, the progressive recognition of the rights of women and dissidence in the country and at home, the democratization of the country, the recognition of social rights .
Here, in this place from where I speak to you today, Balmaceda and his Chilean dignity passed, Pedro Aguirre Cerda and his "to govern is to educate" quoting Valentín Letelier.
Eduardo Frei Montalva and the popular promotion, comrade Salvador Allende and the nationalization of Copper, Patricio Aylwin and the recovery of democracy, Michelle Bachelet opening unexplored paths with social protection also passed through here.
Here you can also hear the echoes of those who have anonymously risen up against oppression, defending human rights, demanding truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition.
The feminist cry and its fight for equality resonates here.
And some will also remember the 1,800 hours running around La Moneda for education.
But these walls have also witnessed the horror of a past of violence and oppression that we have not forgotten and will not forget.*
This Palace, this Square, this city, this country have history and we also owe ourselves to that history. Today, on this important day in the difficult, difficult path of changes that the citizenry decided to start in unity, I repeat, important, in unity, the days come to my mind and my heart when, together with many of the Here present, and surely those who are seeing us in their homes too, we marched together for a worthy future.
Where were we going, compatriots? where were we going?
This Government is not going to be the end of that march, we are going to keep going and the road, without a doubt, is going to be long and difficult, but today the dreams of millions of people are here pushing us, giving us meaning to bring the changes that society demands.
Chileans and Chileans:
My dream is that when we finish our mandate, and I speak in the plural because this is not something individual, this is not about me, this is about the mandate that the people gave us to this collective project, when we finish this mandate we can look at our children, our sisters, our parents, our neighbors, our grandparents and we feel that there is a country that protects us, that welcomes us, that cares for us, that guarantees rights and fairly rewards the contribution and sacrifice that each one of you, of the inhabitants of our country, do for the development of our society.
I would like, compatriots and in the examples one always falls short, but I would like, compatriots, that the people of Puchuncaví and Coronel can look to the future and know that their children are not going to grow up surrounded by contamination, something so basic.
That the people, the workers of Lota are not going to continue living in poverty.
That the communities of algueras and artisanal fishermen of the province of Cardenal Caro will be able to continue developing their traditional activities.
Let the boys and girls of Alto Hospicio, up there, know that they too will be able to access decent housing.
May the neighbors of Antofagasta, Maipú, Hualpén feel calm when they return from their jobs and have time to live with their families. That is why we will promote, as we have promised, the 40 hours.
That the young people of Juan Fernández, that isolated, insular place, will be able to have a decent school to study.
We know, compatriots, that meeting our goals will not be easy, that we will face external and internal crises, that we will make mistakes and that we must correct those mistakes with humility, always listening to those who think differently and relying on the people of Chile.
I want to tell you that we are going to live in challenging and tremendously complex times. The pandemic continues its course, with a balance of pain and loss of life that will accompany us for a long time, surely all of you know someone who has left as a result of the pandemic.
Let's think, let's think for a second, for a second about who has gone and who has left us, let's think about the pain that each family has in their intimacy because of who has left and who will not return. We have to embrace each other as a society, love each other again, smile again, this beyond speeches and beyond what is written, how important, how different it is when in a town we love each other, we take care of each other, we do not distrust each other of the other, but we support each other. We ask our neighbor how he is, we support the worker next door, we love each other, we get ahead together. That is what we have to build, compatriots.
We also know that the economy continues to suffer and that the country needs to stand up, grow and fairly distribute the fruits of this growth, because when there is no distribution of wealth, when wealth is concentrated only in a few, the pay is very difficult. We need to redistribute the wealth produced by Chilean men and women, produced by those who inhabit our country.
We know that to all these difficulties is added, in addition, an international context marked by violence in many parts of the world and today also by war. And in this I want to be very clear, Chile, our country, will always promote respect for Human Rights, everywhere and regardless of the color of the government that violates them.
From Chile, in our Latin America, because we are deeply Latin American and enough of looking at our neighboring countries from a distance, we are deeply Latin American and greetings to our brother peoples, from here, from this continent we will make efforts so that the voice of the south becomes to listen firmly in a changing world.
There are so many challenges, the climate emergency, migration processes, economic globalization, the energy crisis, permanent violence against women and dissidence. We have to work together with our sister nations, as we discussed today with Presidents of other countries. Never again look at us in less, never
Dear inhabitants of our land:
I assume today with humility, aware of the difficulties the mandate that you have entrusted to me, I also do so with the conviction that only in the collective construction of a more dignified society can we found a better life for all. In Chile there is no one left, we build democracy together and the life we dream of can only be born from coexistence, dialogue, democracy, collaboration and not exclusion.
I know that in 4 more years the people of Chile will judge us by our works and not by our words and that, as an old poet used to say, when the adjective does not give life, it kills. Today it was necessary to talk, tomorrow all together to work.
As Salvador Allende predicted almost 50 years ago, we are again, compatriots, opening the great avenues through which free men, free men and women pass, to build a better society.
We continue. Long live Chile!
*Here's a link to a post I did in July 2019 from Santiago which includes a picture of the palace he spoke from with two women picketing outside. This is the building that the Air Force bombed in Pinochet's coup and where Allende committed suicide rather than be captured and tortured and possibly betray others. I'd note that Allende's wife attended Boric's inaugural.
Below is another analysis of this significant change in Chilean politics.
When you get a chance, tie up one of your oil fanatic Republican family members and/or friends and make them watch this. It covers most of the relevant issues. Trust me. It's worth watching.
While we were Outside, I read people's complaints about the roads, the lack of plowing, etc. We only got back Monday night, so we haven't lived with it. But there was a huge pile of snow in front of our house - if I'd have tried to park in front of the house in my normal spot, I would have been blocking the road.
But today the snow plows showed up around 9am and worked our neighborhood til about 5pm. Back and forth, widening the street, then clearing the snow. Then widening more. Scraping the ice until the pavement was showing. I don't recall there ever being such a day where our neighborhood got this much attention.
Here's he's making lots of noise as he's scraping down through the ice to the pavement below.
To the left there is still ice on the street. To the right he's gone down to the asphalt
At this point they have cleared the berms on the sides of the streets several times. Now they've gotten the snow that had been piled up on the sides of the street, including the huge pile in front of our place. It's in a big berm in the middle of the street - maybe 5 or 6 feet high.
Here's a bit of video as this piece of equipment pulls up the snow berm and spits it into the waiting dump truck.
As I said, we missed much of the terrible road conditions. I don't recall the snow removal teams spending this much time - the whole day - in our neighborhood and getting rid of so much snow and ice in a single day. My thanks to the team that cleared the streets so well.
Sunday I joined my daughter and about 100 other folks from the island in a short procession and quiet rally for the people of Ukraine. It was organized by the Interfaith Council. Some pictures.
We're about to board a plane back to Anchorage. Looking forward to a second spring, but it could be a while.
