Guidance /
Memo from the LWVUS Advocacy and Litigation Department: “Communities of Interest” in the Redistricting Process
A memo from the League of Women Voter's Advocacy and Litigation team stating the League’s redistricting position that a redistricting plan should provide for, to the extent possible, the preservation of communities of interest.
To: All 50 States and D.C.
From: Advocacy and Litigation Department
Date: January 17, 2020
Subject: “Communities of Interest” in the Redistricting Process
The League’s redistricting position states that a redistricting plan should provide for, to the extent possible, the preservation of communities of interest. What are communities of interest? Groups of individuals who are likely to have comparable legislative and community concerns based on similarities and who therefore would benefit from cohesive representation in the legislature.1
Communities of interest can but do not necessarily connote a racial, ethnic or linguistic group. The affinity group could be based on geographic, governmental, regional, social, cultural, historic, socio-economic, occupations, and/or lifestyles interests and may not reside in a county or municipal boundary. Example concerns could be transportation, school funding, and administration, or public safety issues like fire and water or police forces. Shared local experiences allow community members to band together to appeal to lawmakers regarding their shared interests.2
Over the past four redistricting cycles, courts have discussed the importance of recognizing
communities of interest when drawing legislative maps, providing the following examples:
- Hawaii’s islands are each separate communities of interest;3
- North Carolina’s rural regions;4
- Georgia’s coastal counties;5
- Pennsylvania’s coal industry;6
- Colorado’s mountain regions;7
- Texas’s impoverished and needy areas;8
- Places that share churches/religion;
- Areas within a single school district;
- Cities with shared public transportation; and
- Counties with shared broadcast and print media.9
Communities of interest are most easily identified by folks on the local level. For example, a plaintiff in a lawsuit regarding Colorado’s maps identified seven separate communities of interest shared by the city of Pueblo and the San Luis Valley region where she lived. These
communities of interest included employment (Valley residents work in Pueblo), religion (the Diocese of Pueblo includes the Valley, which is 40% Catholic), education (Valley residents attend university and college in Pueblo), and health (Pueblo and the Valley share several
hospitals and medical facilities).10 These communities of interest were presented to the court as reasons Pueblo and the Valley should not be split up in Colorado’s legislative maps.
Race Alone Is Not A Community of Interest
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act offers protections to racial and language minorities by prohibiting vote dilution. However, the Supreme Court decisions on racial gerrymandering make it clear that “race” by itself does not make a community of interest. The Court created a "predominant factor" test to ensure race is not the "predominant" consideration in carving out communities of interest when drawing legislative districts. Race must be combined with a “nonracial factor,” like socio-economic status, geographic similarities, or any other interest the community shares.11 The Court has repeatedly struck down maps (in Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina) because legislators failed the “predominant factor” test. In the Georgia case, new maps were approved by a federal court because legislators named Georgia’s “agrarian peanut district” and “poultry industry” as communities of interest instead of grouping districts based predominantly on race.12
Conclusion
The League’s Impact on Issues requires redistricting commissions to preserve and protect communities of interest, to the extent possible. Several states have constitutional provisions, laws, and/or redistricting guidelines13 that require keeping communities of interest intact as much as possible when drawing maps. As our Redistricting Champions ramp up their work on this issue, they should have concrete examples of communities of interest and know-how to identify such communities in their own areas.
Below are some example testimonies provided to Texas’ Redistricting Commission during public input hearings regarding respective communities of interest in 2019. These examples are meant to provide insight, inspiration and showcase ways for you to develop testimony or written submissions in your own states.
Joyce: I live in an area known as Spring Branch in Houston, north side of I-10, west of 6-10 loop. It is politically separated from its sister area known as Memorial on the south side of I-10 which is a mirror image of Spring Branch; my community of interest is Spring Branch Independent School District which includes all of Spring Branch and Memorial. The district is bounded by Hempstead highway on the northeast, Interstate 10 on the east, clay road on the north and Addicks Dam on the west, and Buffalo Bayou on the south; Spring Branch and Memorial must be kept together so we can speak with a united and strong voice so we can advocate for the needs of our students on all levels. For example, the decisions of the Texas legislature regarding Medicaid expansion, CHIP, and SNAP have negatively impacted the well-being of our students. As grandparents, parents, and educators we want to work together to optimize our school district and the ability of our students to receive their best education. Further, the entire Spring Branch Independent School District exists in the shadow of the Addicks Dam. The army corps of engineers have considered it dangerously unstable for at least 30 years. Water was released during hurricane Harvey to prevent the total failure of the structure; that release caused unprecedented flooding, property loss, and devastation to the nearby residents who otherwise would not have sustained any weather-related damage from hurricane Harvey. We need to unite in order to demand action to resolve real structural inadequacies of the dam.
Katy Independent School District (Blue lines)
Congressional District 7 (Purple area)
Jan: I live in the Katy part of west Congressional District 7 (CD); our CD stretches from inside the beltway of Houston to highway 99; we live on the west side of this oddly shaped district...those of us in this unincorporated area of Katy West Houston don’t seem to fit with CD 7. The bulk of this district is in the city of Houston within beltway 8 and parts are even inside the loop. Despite being part of Houston CD 7, we have no vote in the Houston city mayoral race or most city issues. Our ballots are quite different, we feel that we are different, we don’t belong. We vote in Katy Independent School District (KISD) elections, and I feel that are our interests are aligned with other KISD voters. Therefore, we should be in a new district that encompasses our area and KISD; currently, we have four CD districts, CD 22, 7, 10, and 2 that run through our KISD area. In national education issues, how can our voices impact decisions? This makes no sense. When we need to voice our needs as constituents, we must call 4 Congressmen? It is no different at the statehouse level, again we have a similar situation; we have House District 28, 149, 132, and 130 [that run through KISD]. I do not feel that I have personal representation to whom I can ask questions and also have a strong impact. When creating the new districts in 2021 our city of Katy must not be divided into bits and pieces; our area is growing and changing, and I want our representation at both the federal and state levels to evidence those changes in both numbers and demographics.
Marsha: I live in unincorporated Harris county near Katy, Texas. My subdivision is located in a suburban area with surrounding businesses supporting the neighborhood; we are west of highway 6 by several miles; north and south of I-10 and east of Sealy. Our area is growing by leaps and bounds and the last population figure I heard was over 300,000 residents. Our identification is suburban with most of us working in Houston city limits. I worked in the city of Houston for over 20 years. I was often frustrated because of transportation issues. Having lived in my neighborhood for over 25 years I know a lot of my neighbors work in Houston and share my concerns. The transportation issues in Houston are not of much concern for the residents of Freeport or West Columbia or the miles and miles of the rural areas around those towns that are included in Senate District 17. The current map does not address my transportation issues. Other transportation issues involve the benefits of living in a suburb of a city like Houston: there are precious few convenient east-west corridors that allow us to take advantage of sports, shopping, and cultural attractions in Houston. Sometimes I feel as if the powers-that-be don’t even know how many of us are out here. While I don’t agree with all of my neighbors all of the time, we all live in this area for similar reasons; that is why geography plays such a large part in carving out governmental districts. We live in the suburbs because we can afford bigger houses than if we lived in town but we like what the city has to offer such as jobs, cultural events, sporting events, medical access, etc. The fact that you can draw a map without picking up a pencil doesn’t mean it’s contiguous according to the intention of the law. I have nothing in common with people who choose to live in small towns or on acreages or ranches; those people live far away from the city and don’t need or want quick and easy access to Houston or what it offers. I want my representatives to keep me and my neighbors in mind when creating legislation, I want my representatives to be a suburbanite who happens to go to Austin every other year to take care of the problems that arise in my neighborhood and those like it.
Congressional District 2 - Montrose, Houston, Texas
Congressional District 2
Henry: I live in a district of inner-city Houston called Montrose, which is squarely contained within the interstate 6-10 loop which demarcates Houston’s urban center. I reside in CD 2 which in 2003 was radically and dramatically reconfigured to include several communities which are far away from where I live in the center of Houston. Congressional District 2 includes a section of far-flung suburbs of Humble, Spring, and Kingwood which are more than an hour’s drive from where I live and whose economic structures and imperatives are very different from inner-city Houston. Montrose is a community of interest that shares commonalities with other parts of inner-city Houston not the far-flung suburbs of Humble, Spring, and Kingwood. (Henry was asked whether businesses and educational institutions were drawn out of his district and he said yes.)
Debra: I live in the NE area of Dallas County in the city limits of Dallas and bound by four specific city municipalities: bound by the north by Renner Road in Richardson, the southern border is forest lane in Dallas, and to the east is Jupiter by Garland Road, and on the western border bound by Midway Road in Addison. This configuration for my district, while all part of Dallas county, is in three unique school districts and four municipalities for services like police and fire. That means four different approaches to a common goal like reducing crime. My home is located in Jackson Meadow, a country forest community, and improvement in public safety has been a major priority for those of us in Dallas. The work to ensure public safety in my community is vastly different than the three other cities within my district. For example, in Richardson, their priority and main focus is on programs and city services in light of the passing of SB 4; in Garland, they are more focused on infrastructure and utilities, and in Addison, they are focused on economic development. Each of these efforts could be helped tremendously by having a representative who focuses on specific priorities for that particular city and not dividing their attention between three other cities including mine. I believe this configuration has no other intention than to diminish the power of voters and limit our ability to address the issues that are important to our communities. Gerrymandering hurts our communities and with it, it also limits our ability to impact the unique situations to each of our communities.
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1 “Communities of Interest" Brennan Center for Justice. Updated November 2010:
https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/6%20Communities%20of%20Interest.pdf
2 Arizonans for Fair Representation v. Symington, 828 F. Supp. 684 - Dist. Court, D. Arizona (1992).
3 Kostick v. Nago, 960 F. Supp. 2d. 1074 - Dist. Court, D Hawaii (2013).
4 Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993).
5 Johnson v. Miller, 922 F. Supp. 1556 - Dist. Court, SD Georgia (1995).
6 Holt v. 2011 Legislative Reapportionment, 38 A. 3d 7811 Pa. Sup Ct. (2012).
7 Carstens, at 83.
8 Session v. Perry, 298 F. Supp 2d 451 - Dist. Court, ED Texas (2004).
9 Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952 (1996) (O’Connor, J. concurring).
10 Carstens, at Footnote 67.
11 Johnson, at 1566
12Johnson, at 1565.
13Brennan Center for Justice.