Senate Republican leader says Legislature is sidestepping responsibility by not reconvening to redraw maps

Sep. 27—The Legislature's decision not to convene a special session to adopt new legislative maps before a court-ordered Jan. 8 deadline is a "dereliction of duty," according to Senate Republican Leader John Braun, R-Centralia.

"The underlying effort, I believe ... is to go around this constitutionally mandated, voter-installed, bipartisan process," Braun said in an interview with The Chronicle on Sept. 19. "You can't get to a supermajority if it's bipartisan. You're going to have a little more balance, which I think is good for everybody."

After a federal court's recent decision to require a redraw on one Legislative district's boundaries that were set after the 2020 U.S. Census, Braun was critical of his Democratic counterparts' decision not to involve the Legislature in that process. A few days prior, Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, and Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig, D-Spokane, said they wouldn't call for a special session of the Legislature, instead allowing a United States District Court to create its own new boundaries on District 15 in the Yakima Valley.

The case, Soto Palmer v. Hobbs, ruled the initial maps did not meet standards set in the Voting Rights Act.

"Voters in the Yakima Valley are entitled to fair and timely legislative maps," Jinkins and Billig said in a joint statement.

"The most expedient and non-political way to move forward is for the court to directly adopt a map that meets statutory and constitutional obligations, providing Yakima Valley voters the ability to elect their candidate of choice."

The 15th Legislative District, which stretches south-central Washington from Yakima to Pasco, was drawn during the 2021 redistricting cycle. Voters there elected Sen. Nikki Torres, R-Pasco, in the November 2022 election. Braun, pointing out that Torres is Latina, said he believed the Democratic leaders' ultimate goal was to earn the seat back for their party.

In August, a federal court found the map violated the federal Voting Rights Act by splitting the Hispanic population in the area between multiple districts, thereby diluting its voting power.

As a result, the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled the map must be redrawn.

The Washington Legislature could reconvene and order the bipartisan Redistricting Commission to redraw the map. The commission typically meets every 10 years and includes two Democratic and two Republican nominees.

"You can't get rid of the political. And, to say it's nonpartisan is nonsense," Braun said. "But making it bipartisan is actually a great move, and it was a great move proposed by the Democrats back in the 80s."

Braun said legislative leaders declining to reconvene and the task instead falling to federal courts bucks Washington's "model" redistricting process. The change is unlikely to impact the 20th District, which Braun represents, but will impact at least one of the neighboring districts around the 15th.

"Redistricting is a legislative job. That is our responsibility. the Redistricting Commission is a legislative agency. That's our job," Braun said. "They're putting decades of good work by the Redistricting Commission at risk, in my view."

According to a joint statement Wednesday with House Republican Deputy Leader Mike Steele, House and Senate Republicans unanimously support reconvening the Legislature for a special session.

The last time the redistricting commitssion met, it failed to meet a Nov. 15, 2021, deadline to approve new maps, which sent the task to the state Supreme Court. The court later unanimously adopted a bipartisan set of maps agreed to by the court commissioners on the redistricting committee.

"The redistricting commission, they got dealt a situation nobody had seen before," Braun said of the process that ultimately resulted in delayed maps, including delayed delivery of the data needed to redraw the maps.

Braun said the state Legislature could reconvene to adopt new maps that would take "an hour."

"If we need to do this, the right way to do it is to reconvene the redistricting commission, have them go through the process again of redrawing LD-15 in an open, transparent and inclusive way," he said.

Braun said the commission during the initial process "did a very good job in a very difficult part of the state." The Senate Republican leader believed Democrats hoped redistricting would increase the party's influence in Eastern Washington, a traditional stronghold for Republicans.

If the redrawn map becomes less favorable to Republicans, the party won't "roll over," he said.

"We think that, based on values and better candidates, we can still win there," Braun said. "But it's a chance for them to just grab a district. It doesn't matter if it's East or Western Washington."

In both an interview with The Chronicle and in the joint statement, Braun said political forces could be at play.

"If majority leadership stands by their decision to not call a special session and punts redistricting to the federal courts, they will not only be shirking their legislative responsibility to the people of Washington — they will be using the federal courts as a tool to achieve the partisan political changes they could not get through bipartisan negotiations during the redistricting process," the statement reads. "This is an intolerable dereliction of legislative duty and a blatant end-around the state constitution."

Regardless of who has the pen, the redrawn map will likely result in additional court challenges in the coming years. Soto Palmer V. Hobbs, the case that resulted in an order to redraw the maps, has been appealed to the Ninth District Court of Appeals. Braun said a separate case, Garcia V. Hobbs, will be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, though it's not a certainty the court will accept the case.

In Garcia v. Hobbs, a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the case was moot since Soto V. Palmer already ordered new maps.

"When they do this, however it happens, this is all subject to additional lawsuit and additional appeal," Braun said. "So, we're not done with this fight, however it happens."