•December 1, 2021•
By Capital News Illinois

Lawyers for the General Assembly’s Democratic leaders filed documents in federal court Wednesday, Nov. 24, denying that newly drawn state legislative district maps amount to racial gerrymandering, instead accusing the plaintiffs in the three lawsuits of trying to use race to redraw districts for their own purposes.
Among other things, 2020 U.S. Census numbers showed Illinois had lost population overall since the 2010 census. But there had been a substantial increase in the state’s Latino population while Black and white populations both declined.
In separate suits, Republican leaders and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, both argued that despite the growth in the Latino population, the new maps actually reduce the number of districts in which Latinos make up a majority, or a large plurality, of the voting age population. They argued that violates both the U.S. Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.