The Independent View: Federal Judge Orders New Redistricting Plan for 39-Seat Albany County Legislature

Albany County, New York diluted minority voting power in its 2011 redistricting plan, a federal judge ruled Tuesday in a decision that temporarily freezes this year's legislative elections until a new plan is drafted.

Senior U.S. Judge Lawrence Kahn's 81-page decision orders the county to submit an amended map of its 39 legislative districts within three weeks, a timetable aimed at minimizing disruption to an election calendar that begins in June.

The defeat marks the third straight time the county will be forced to alter its political lines amid a challenge under the federal 1965 Voting Rights Act, a landmark piece of legislation aimed at protecting the franchise of minority voters.

"With rare exceptions, there is not yet an equal, fair opportunity for minority-preferred candidates to be elected on a county level absent special circumstances," Kahn wrote, calling the county's entire redistricting process "questionable." That reality, the judge said, persists despite the rise of "vibrant and more impactful" black leadership in recent years and "laudable progress to address racial disparities."

In ruling against the county, Kahn accepted expert analysis that white and black citizens continue to vote as a bloc in a way that usually defeats the candidate preferred by minorities.

The county offered no statistical rebuttal to that after its expert witness effectively backed out of the case.

Mary Rozak, a spokeswoman for County Executive Dan McCoy, said officials were "still reviewing all options" whether to appeal.

"This was a predictable outcome," said voting rights activist Aaron Mair of Guilderland, who testified against the county in the case and called the county's actions "a willful attempt to disenfranchise the minority community."

The loss could cost county taxpayers $1 million or more in plaintiffs' legal fees, which Kahn ordered the county to pay.

McCoy and legislative leaders missed two opportunities to limit the damage when they failed to agree with each other on settlement terms that would have capped the legal fees while meeting the plaintiffs' demands.

The heart of the lawsuit was the decision by the county's redistricting commission, endorsed by a McCoy-led legislature and then-County Executive Michael Breslin, not to draw a fifth legislative district in which minority residents are a majority. Several members of the minority community, including then-County Legislator Wanda Willingham, sued contending a fifth district was warranted in light of demographic changes detailed in the 2010 census. County officials claimed creating the district was not possible, but only, Kahn found, because they used the narrowest possible definition of who should count as a minority and "neither the commissioners nor the public were accurately informed of the procedures that were used."

Testimony, the judge continued, showed "that the public and commissioners were led to believe that creating five minority districts simply was not possible, even using a broad definition of minority voters, which evidence shows was untrue."

Kahn's decision sidestepped arguably the thorniest legal question in the 11-day trial this winter: whether black and Hispanic residents are politically cohesive enough to be counted together for the purposes of redistricting. The county did not count them together despite claiming it had. But the judge ruled he need not address that because there was cause to find the county violated the law just looking at residents who identify as black.

A keystone of the county's defense was that it relied on the demands of the minority community during the latter stages of a 2003 lawsuit to shape how it approached the redistricting in 2011. Among those 2003 demands were that the county not count blacks and Hispanics together and that the districts be drafted with more than just a bare majority of black voters. A federal judge eventually required the county to count the groups together.

"In the 2011 redistricting process, the County attempted to honor this request," Rozak, the county spokeswoman, said. "It has always been the county's intent to create minority districts where voting has not been diluted and to protect the voting rights of all minorities in Albany County."

Legislature Chairman Shawn Morse, who led the 2011 redistricting commission, said Kahn's decision is anything but a victory for the minority community, which he said will now find it more difficult to elect candidates. The county, Morse said, will be forced to draw five districts with smaller numbers of minority voters that "will not be strong, true minority districts." "We aimed to make the minority districts with a foundation that gives them the greatest chance of winning," he said, "and it was based on their own arguments."

But in relying so heavily on the 2003 litigation, Kahn ruled, the county "plainly ignored current concerns of members of the minority community, many of whom were plaintiffs in the prior lawsuit."

Morse said his preference would be not to appeal the decision but cautioned he had to consult with Democratic Majority Leader Frank Commisso and McCoy.

The plaintiffs were represented by New York City-based lawyers from the firm Gibson Dunn and Albany attorney Paul DerOhannesian II.

Mitchell Karlan, one of the lead attorneys, said the plaintiffs "look forward to working with the county to prepare a legitimate map that protects the voting rights of all citizens of Albany County."