Federal judge tosses changes in City Council district lines; council might have less than three weeks to draw new ones

A federal judge today ordered city officials to stop their preparations for the fall district council elections, ruling that the maps approved last fall are illegal because they relied on race to draw the boundaries between two largely Dorchester districts without proof racially based solutions were needed in Boston.

"The ball is back in the City Council’s court," US District Court Judge Patti Saris ruled. "Defendants are enjoined from using the enacted map in municipal elections."

Saris's injunction is a partial victory for a group - funded in part by at least three city councilors who voted against the plan - who sued to block the changes. However, Saris concluded that while the group had proven their case when it came to the use of race conclusively enough for her to issue an injunction, they failed to prove that the 9-4 council majority deliberately violated the federal Voting Rights Act rather than engaging in "a good faith misunderstanding" of the law.

Saris also rejected the group's request that she appoint a special master to draw district lines based on the 2020 census, ruling that she did not thing the council majority acted out of any ill will and that the council remained the best option for re-drawing lines in time for the September preliminaries and November final election.

In my view, the City Council is best positioned to redraw the lines in light of traditional districting principles and the Constitution. The role of race in redistricting is complicated and in flux, and the Court finds that the City Council acted in good faith in trying to comply with complex voting rights laws.

She acknowledged this means the council and the city elections department will have to move fast, since May 23 is the current deadline for submitting nomination papers for district seats.

Saris also concluded that several public meetings held to discuss redistricting without sufficient advance public notice would not ultimately prove to be a violation of the state Open Meeting Law because the council ultimately "cured" the issue by holding a series of well and legally publicized City Hall hearings on redistricting.

The council moved to redraw the lines used to elect the city's nine district councilors after the 2020 Census numbers showed that District 2 - largely South Boston, including the emerging Seaport - now had too many residents and needed to shed voters.

In an effort to deal with that while maintaining "opportunity" districts in which minority candidates would have a good chance of winning, while also not "packing" too many minority voters into one district, the plan approved by the council shifted a number of precincts around, moving some District 2 precincts into District 3, such as two of its largest housing projects, and moving District 3's largely white Cedar Grove and part of its also largely white Adams Village into District 4.

Saris concluded the effort to maintain Districts 3, 4, 5 (Hyde Park, Mattapan, Roslindale) and 7 (Roxbury) as minority "opportunity districts," while well meaning, likely violated federal equal-protection laws because councilors never showed "a compelling interest" to use race as a reason to draw district lines a particular way. She noted that none of the city councilors who discussed keeping districts as minority "opportunity districts" testified in hearings she held and that none appeared to provide such specifics during council hearings on redistricting.

Because the City Council has failed to produce a “strong basis in evidence” of a [Voting Rights Act] violation to justify drawing District 3 and 4 lines primarily based on race, it cannot demonstrate that the enacted map was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest. ...

On this record, Defendants have not established that strengthening District 3 as an opportunity district or shifting more White voters into District 4 to avoid packing serves a compelling interest that is narrowly tailored to serve that end.