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Friday, February 25, 2011

Ind. Courts - "Jeffersonville redistricting opponent says Census data supports lawsuit" [Updated]

A Feb. 23rd story by Ben Zion Hershberg in the Louisville Courier Journal begins:

A man who has filed suit over Jeffersonville’s redistricting plan said Wednesday that new U.S. Census data supports his claims that residents of the city’s recently annexed areas were disenfranchised.

And if a federal magistrate agrees, both sides said, it could force a special primary election because the filing deadline for the May primary — in with city council districts were based on older data — has already passed.

Bruce Herdt, who sued over the plan last year, said that he plans to introduce the new Census data into his lawsuit as soon as the judge allows.

Here is a list of earlier, related ILB entries.

[Updated at 10:24 am] David Mann of the Clark County News & Tribune has this story this morning that begins:

JEFFERSONVILLE — Legal action related to Jeffersonville’s recent redistricting has been delayed, but new Census numbers are giving new perspective to the case.

The Jeffersonville City Council redistricted last year, going from a five-district to a six-district council. That move came after an annexation and reclassification that took Jeffersonville from third class to second class under Indiana’s population-based classification system. Shortly after that, a lawsuit was filed claiming that the population numbers used in redistricting — based on the 2000 Census — were too old and therefore didn’t account for growth in recently annexed outskirts.

A pretrial conference on the lawsuit Thursday was postponed, as a new magistrate was assigned to the case, which was filed in U.S. Federal District Court in New Albany. A new date has yet to be determined.

When the council voted to redistrict last fall, numbers from the 2010 Census weren’t available.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 25, 2011 09:36 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts