In a powerful affirmation of equality under the law, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
That principle is at the heart of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which reaffirmed that legislative districts cannot be drawn primarily on the basis of race.
In response to that ruling,
I have filed a federal lawsuit against Governor JB Pritzker, the Illinois State Board of Elections, and its executive director
for violating the United States Constitution through Illinois’ race-based legislative mapping process.
Represented by attorneys from the Public Interest Legal Foundation, I am challenging the explicit use of race as a primary factor in drawing legislative district boundaries in Illinois.
This lawsuit is about more than maps or politics – it is about equal treatment under the law, fair representation, and protecting the constitutional principle that every citizen deserves to be represented as an individual, not categorized by race.
I am proud to stand for a fair and constitutional redistricting process that respects the rights and voices of all Illinoisans.
The SCOTUS decision invalidated a Louisiana legislative map drawn specifically to create a second Black majority voting district and said the use of race in drawing legislative districts is unconstitutional. Read more about the case HERE and HERE.
If the Louisiana map was unconstitutional, than Illinois’ Voting Rights Act, which specifically mandates the drawing of districts with racial intent, is also unconstitutional.
Read our Voting Rights Act (VRA)at this LINK.
The Illinois VRA specifically requires race be a consideration in drawing maps.
My friends at the Edgar County Watchdogs wrote the first story about my lawsuit and embedded a copy of the entire complaint in their story. You can read the entire complaint HERE.
The Complaint includes the following points:
- The Illinois Voting Rights Act of 2011 (“Illinois Voting Rights Act”) mandates the creation of racial districts in violation of Plaintiff’s civil rights protected by the Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Section 2(a) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (“Voting Rights Act”).
- The Voting Rights Act forbids enforcing election procedures enacted with a racial intent or that results in a denial, or abridgment, of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race. 52 U.S.C. § 10101(a). The Illinois Voting Rights Act requires drawing district lines to preserve deliberate racial percentages, racial majorities, and the deliberate preservation of racial influence districts. This violates the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.
- By intentionally distorting district boundaries along racial lines to draw crossover districts, coalition districts, or influence districts, Illinois has and continues to violate the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Section 2(a) of the Voting Rights Act. See U.S. CONST., amend. XV, § 1; 52 U.S.C. § 10101(a); see also Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 657 (1993) (“[r]acial gerrymandering, … may balkanize us into competing racial factions; it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters”).
The lawsuit seeks to declare that the Illinois Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional as it violates the Fifteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The Race Hustle Must End
It seems pretty obvious, and yet, in Illinois and elsewhere, the race hustle is embedded in much of our public policy. It’s all race, all the time from Chicago to Springfield – especially with the Black Caucus in control of the Illinois House under Speaker Chris Welch.
- The SAFE-T Act was drawn up and pushed by the Black Caucus and is an example where racial issues blinded legislators into making unjust and unserious laws that just recently played a part in Officer Bartholomew’s murder.
- Do you remember the race-based minority teaching scholarship in Illinois? Whites need not apply. Illinois was sued by Pacific Legal Foundation and the state folded immediately on the case because they knew the scholarship was discriminatory and unconstitutional.
- The Black leaders tried to pass race-based higher education funding. They have an 89-page report that said Black students were worth $6,000 in additional funding from the state, and Hispanic students were worth $4,000. I published a couple detailed articles on the topic, read HERE and HERE. Once Trump took office, they dropped the race-based funding and hid it as “underserved communities.
- The Labor and Commerce committee focuses on minority jobs, training, and set-asides at nearly every hearing.
- The NIU President highlighted their institution being designated as a “Hispanic Serving Institution.”
- Every education bureaucrat is habitually asked about minority enrollment and support
- Major legislation always has a section requiring minority set-asides. CEJA and the Bears Mega Project bill are just two prominent examples.
- Illinois has an Equity and Inclusion Commission where each commissioner is paid $150,000 and their primary job is to ensure minority businesses get certified as such so they can receive preferential treatment. There’s been a lot of scrutiny on them lately because they aren’t doing their job! Read HERE.
And when it comes to floor debate, the Democrats take every opportunity to infer that a question or argument from any Republican is racist.
It’s all about race in Illinois.
The race hustle and the necessity for Leftists to keep it going is very powerful.
That’s why the latest SCOTUS decision in Louisiana v. Callais has Democrats enraged that the gig is up on drawing legislative districts based on race.
In the wake of the decision, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama have either redrawn their maps or are looking to do so. Other states are expected to follow.
And the Democrats heads are exploding.
WBEZ reporting on the response from Democrats wrote this:
Obama said the ruling “effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities — so long as they do it under the guise of ‘partisanship’ rather than explicit ‘racial bias.’”
[Pritzker:] “We must call this for what it is: voter suppression that will silence Black and Brown voters,” the governor said in a statement. “The magnitude of this decision cannot be understated: It guts the Voting Rights Act and its very purpose of protecting all voices. Every American deserves an equal vote.”
Durbin, who is still pushing for the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore safeguards to the original Voting Rights Act, said the decision shows the supermajority “has again turned its back on the promise of an equal right to vote, further eroding the landmark Voting Rights Act.”
Duckworth called the decision “a crushing blow to our democracy.”
“We cannot stand by as Trump’s extreme SCOTUS eviscerates protections against voter suppression that heroes like Dr. King and John Lewis marched for,” Duckworth said on social media. “We need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Now.”
Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who won the Democratic primary for Durbin’s seat, said the ruling is part of a GOP effort to gut the Voting Rights Act and dilute Black representation.
Illinois Democrats have no leg to stand on, though, and Governor Pritzker is a liar on the issue.
The Princeton Gerrymandering Project gives Illinois an F for it maps. And “F” isn’t for Fair, it’s for FAILURE.
Important to note at this time is that when Pritzker ran in 2018, he said was going to be the fairest of them all and promised the legislative maps would be drawn with an independent commission.
As the Sun-Times reported in 2021 as the redistricting process was happening:
During his 2018 campaign for governor, Pritzker supported an amendment to Illinois’ constitution that would have taken the redistricting process out of state legislators’ hands and sent it to an independent commission.
Should such an amendment fail to be adopted, Pritzker said in 2018 that he would veto maps “in any way drafted or created by legislators, political party leaders and/or their staffs or allies” and would support an independent commission set up by the state Legislature.
But Evil King Pritzker wasn’t the fairest of them all. Not even 2nd, 3rd, or 4th in the beauty contest of fair map making. His map got an F and in the process he was found to have completely forgot about his campaign promise to the people.
After the 2020 census, a few select Democrats worked behind a locked door to draw the new maps in 2021. And they were a disaster. The first map was thrown out by the court for using faulty data. It took another three maps before the Democrats were happy with their drawing. The final map was not signed into law until late November delaying the usual March Primary until the end of June.
It wasn’t a secret that the maps were indeed drawn with racial intent.
Pritzker literally said proudly that the maps reflect Illinois’ diversity and preserve minority representation.
The media openly reported that the maps were drawn based on racial composition.
In weighing those decisions, Democrats put premiums on drawing districts advantageous to their party, protecting the 1st, 2nd and 7th districts designed to yield Black representatives despite a decrease in Illinois’ Black population, and creating a second district that props up a growing Latino population to elect representation of their choosing.
The 4th district has been represented by a Latino since it was designed for that purpose in the ‘90s. Former U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez became Illinois’ first Hispanic Congressman in 1993; current Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia won the seat in 2018 after Gutiérrez retired. More than 66% of the voters in the 4th district are Hispanic.
In the new map, the 3rd district will be 47% Hispanic and pointedly unites heavily Latino communities. From Chicago’s Logan Square on the eastern edge, it reaches through the Belmont Craigin neighborhood, covers Bensenville and Addison and over to West Chicago, then stretches up to catch Hanover Park, Bartlett and Elgin.
It could not be more clear that not only does the Illinois VRA infuse race into the redistricting process, but the Democrats built districts based on race.
But, the Illinois Democrats wanted even stronger protections of race in future map making. This year they had big plans to pass HJRCA 28 which would have placed considerations of race before contiguous and compact districts.
Only the SCOTUS decision stopped them cold. The bill passed the House just before the Louisiana decision came down. The Senate will not consider the bill now.
Like so many other things, this race hustle is falling apart. First, the Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, then the demise of the Southern Poverty Law Center, what’s next?
This SCOTUS decision is one more victory in the road back to America’s founding principles.
In closing, I look forward to restoring adherence to the U.S. Constitution in Illinois and bringing color-blind governance to all citizens.