An Alaska judge upheld most of the state’s newly redistricted legislative district map on Feb. 15 but overturned a decision that created two East Anchorage Senate seats linked with more politically conservative Eagle River.
The judge also ruled in favor of Skagway, which wants to share a House district with the more cruise ship tourism-oriented downtown Juneau than with the Mendenhall Valley portion of the community.
A day after the judge’s ruling, the Alaska Redistricting Board met in executive session and later voted 3-2 to appeal the ruling to the Alaska Supreme Court, with the three conservative members of the board voting to appeal.
Anchorage Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews heard five legal challenges to the maps drawn last year by the redistricting board. He ordered the board to redraw the Senate pairings in Anchorage/Eagle River and the boundaries of the two Juneau-centered House districts, or offer a legal explanation as to why it is impossible to do so.
The board linked Skagway and Haines in the same House district as Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley, not downtown. The two Lynn Canal communities have been paired with the Juneau downtown district for several years.
In his decision, Matthews faulted the board’s handling of public testimony on the House boundaries between Skagway and Juneau, and he faulted board members for failing to properly address testimony from East Anchorage residents who objected to getting lumped into a Senate district with Eagle River.
He said there was evidence indicating the three Republican-appointed members of the redistricting board worked in secret to give Eagle River greater representation in the Senate, illegally diluting the representation of East Anchorage.
“While the court does not make this finding lightly, it does find evidence of secretive procedures evident in the board’s consideration and deliberation of the Anchorage Senate seat pairings,” the judge wrote.
Matthews declined to say definitively that there was a secret deal, but said, “the court does see ample evidence of secretive process at play.”
Concluding his writing, he said, “This court finds that the board’s refusal to consider and make a good-faith effort to incorporate public feedback relating to the placement of Skagway and the dividing line in Juneau was arbitrary and capricious, and thus unreasonable. The same holds true for the East Anchorage senate pairings.”
The judge ruled against legal challenges from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the city of Valdez and Calista Corp., the regional Native corporation for the Yukon-Kuskokwim region of Southwest Alaska. Each of those plaintiffs had sought changes in the state House map, but Matthews found that the decisions made by the board could be justified by the state constitution, law or prior legal rulings.
Under court rules, the Supreme Court has until April 1 to make a decision on the appeal. The compressed timeline is necessary because June 1 is the deadline for candidates to register for the 2022 election. Several candidates have previously said they are deferring decisions until after court rulings on redistricting.
Alaska, like other states, is required to redraw legislative boundaries after every U.S. Census in order to account for changes in population.
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