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We are excited to announce our Spring SCOTUS in the Classroom case: Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. This much anticipated case will decide whether a coach praying in public after a football game is protected by the Free Exercise Clause and Free Speech Clause or violates the Establishment Clause.

Oral arguments in this case will take place in-person in the Supreme Court building on April 25 and will broadcast LIVE! We encourage teachers to feature this case in class as it is being argued and decided at the Court.

Kennedy v. Bremerton School District presents an opportunity to teach about the tensions and intersections between the Establishment Clause, the Free Exercise Clause, and the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.

Street Law will post case materials as they become available on the SCOTUS in the Classroom program page. Teachers are encouraged to hold moot courts or mini-moot courts of the case the same weeks that the Supreme Court hears arguments, giving students the opportunity to follow discussion and analysis in the news and listen to or read a transcript of the actual oral arguments at the Court.

Background

Joseph Kennedy was employed as an assistant coach for Bremerton High School's varsity football team and the head coach for the junior varsity team. Kennedy is a Christian whose religious beliefs compel him to kneel and pray at the 50-yard line immediately after football games. Bremerton High School (BHS) is a public high school in Washington State.

For seven years, there were no recorded complaints about Kennedy's prayers, speeches, or kneeling. However, in 2015, an employee of another high school brought the prayers to the principal's attention.

Over the course of the season the school and Kennedy could not come to an agreement about the post-game prayers. On October 28 th, Kennedy was placed on paid administrative leave and prohibited from participating in any way with the football team.

Kennedy sued the school district arguing that prohibiting him from saying a brief, quiet prayer on the 50-yard-line after games concluded violated his First Amendment rights. The District Court found for the school district. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court's ruling and ruled against Kennedy again. The court found that even if Kennedy's prayer was private expression protected by the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses, the Establishment Clause nevertheless required its suppression. Kennedy petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case and they agreed.

The important question presented in this case is: Is a public school employee's prayer in view of students immediately following the conclusion of a football game protected speech and religious exercise, and, if so, must the public school employer prohibit it to avoid violating the Establishment Clause?

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Street Law, Inc. | Articles - Spring 2022 SCOTUS in the Classroom Case: Kennedy v. Bremerton School District

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We are excited to announce our Spring SCOTUS in the Classroom case: Kennedy v. Bremerton School District . This much anticipated case will decide whether a coach praying in public after a football game is protected by the Free Exercise Clause and Free Speech Clause or violates the Establishment Clause.

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Federalist 51- how to organize government sep. powers

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Federalist 51- how to organize government sep. powers

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In order to prevent tyranny and provide balance, each branch of government must have distinct and competing powers and responsibilities.

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Native Americans could have a significant impact on midterm elections.

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In order to prevent tyranny and provide balance, each branch of government must have distinct and competing powers and responsibilities.

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What Is Democracy?

Locke and Montesquieu

THE RULE OF LAW

Equality and the Law
The right to equality before the law, or equal protection of the law as it is often phrased, is fundamental to any just and democratic society. Whether rich or poor, ethnic majority or religious minority, political ally of the state or opponent--all are entitled to equal protection before the law.

The democratic state cannot guarantee that life will treat everyone equally, and it has no responsibility to do so. However, writes constitutional law expert John P. Frank, "Under no circumstances should the state impose additional inequalities; it should be required to deal evenly and equally with all of its people."

No one is above the law, which is, after all, the creation of the people, not something imposed upon them. The citizens of a democracy submit to the law because they recognize that, however indirectly, they are submitting to themselves as makers of the law. When laws are established by the people who then have to obey them, both law and democracy are served.

Due Process
In every society throughout history, Frank points out, those who administer the criminal justice system hold power with the potential for abuse and tyranny. In the name of the state, individuals have been imprisoned, had their property seized, and been tortured, exiled and executed without legal justification--and often without any formal charges ever being brought. No democratic society can tolerate such abuses.

Every state must have the power to maintain order and punish criminal acts, but the rules and procedures by which the state enforces its laws must be public and explicit, not secret, arbitrary, or subject to political manipulation by the state.

What are the essential requirements of due process of law in a democracy?

No one's home can be broken into and searched by the police without a court order showing that there is good cause for such a search. The midnight knock of the secret police has no place in a democracy.

No person shall be held under arrest without explicit, written charges that specify the alleged violation. Not only are persons entitled to know the exact nature of the charge against them, they also must be released immediately, under the doctrine known as habeas corpus, if the court finds that the charge is without justification or the arrest is invalid.

Persons charged with crimes should not be held for protracted periods in prison. They are entitled to a speedy and public trial, and to confront and question their accusers.

The authorities are required to grant bail, or conditional release, to the accused pending trial if there is little likelihood that the suspect will flee or commit other crimes. "Cruel and unusual" punishment, as determined by the traditions and laws of the society, is prohibited.

Persons cannot be compelled to be witnesses against themselves. This prohibition against involuntary self- incrimination must be absolute. As a corollary, the police may not use torture or physical or psychological abuse against suspects under any circumstances. A legal system that bans forced confessions immediately reduces the incentives of the police to use torture, threats, or other forms of abuse to obtain information, since the court will not allow such information to be placed into evidence at the time of trial.

Persons shall not be subject to double jeopardy; that is, they cannot be charged with the same crime twice. Any person tried by a court and found not guilty can never be charged with that same crime again.

Because of their potential for abuse by the authorities, so-called ex post facto laws are also proscribed. These are laws made after the fact so that someone can be charged with a crime even though the act was not illegal at the time it occurred.

Defendants may possess additional protections against coercive acts by the state. In the United States, for example, the accused have a right to a lawyer who represents them in all stages of a criminal proceeding, even if they cannot pay for such legal representation themselves. The police must also inform suspects of their rights at the time of their arrest, including the right to an attorney and the right to remain silent (to avoid self- incrimination).

A common tactic of tyranny is to charge opponents of the government with treason. For this reason, the crime of treason must be carefully limited in definition so that it cannot be used as a weapon to stifle criticism of the government.
None of these restrictions means that the state lacks the necessary power to enforce the law and punish offenders. On the contrary, the criminal justice system in a democratic society will be effective to the degree that its administration is judged by the population to be fair and protective of individual rights, as well as of the public interest.

Judges may be either appointed or elected to office, and hold office for specified terms or for life. However they are chosen, it is vital that they be independent of the nation's political authority to ensure their impartiality. Judges cannot be removed for trivial or merely political reasons, but only for serious crimes or misdeeds--and then only through a formal procedure, such as impeachment (the bringing of charges) and trial in the legislature.

Constitutions
The rock upon which a democratic government rests is its constitution--the formal statement of its fundamental obligations, limitations, procedures, and institutions. The constitution of the country is the supreme law of the land, and all citizens, prime ministers to peasants alike, are subject to its provisions. At a minimum, the constitution, which is usually codified in a single written document, establishes the authority of the national government, provides guarantees for fundamental human rights, and sets forth the government's basic operating procedures.

Despite their enduring, monumental qualities, constitutions must be capable of change and adaptation if they are to be more than admirable fossils. The world's oldest written constitution, that of the United States, consists of seven brief articles and 27 amendments. This written document, however, is only the foundation for a vast structure of judicial decisions, statutes, presidential actions, and traditional practices that has been erected over the past 200 years--and kept the U.S. Constitution alive and relevant.

This pattern of constitutional evolution takes place in every democracy. In general, there are two schools of thought about the process of amending, or changing, a nation's constitution. One is to adopt a difficult procedure, requiring many steps and large majorities. As a result, the constitution is changed infrequently, and then only for compelling reasons that receive substantial public support. This is the model of the United States, whose Constitution is a brief statement of the general principles, powers, and limits of government, together with a more specific listing of duties, procedures, and, in the Bill of Rights, the fundamental rights of individual citizens.

A much simpler method of amendment, which many nations use, is to provide that any amendment may be adopted by approval of the legislature and passed by the voters at the next election. Constitutions able to be changed in this fashion can be quite lengthy, with specific provisions that differ little from the general body of legislation.

No constitution like America's, written in the 18th century, could have survived unchanged into the late 20th century. Similarly, no constitution in force today will survive into the next century without the capacity for change--while still holding fast to principles of individual rights, due process, and government through the consent of the governed.

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What Is Democracy? Locke and Montesquieu THE RULE OF LAW Equality and the Law The right to equality before the law, or equal protection of the law as it is often phrased, is fundamental to any just and democratic society.

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In a limited government administered according to the rule of law, the rulers use power following established principles and procedures based on a constitution. By contrast, when the rulers wield power capriciously, there is rule by the unbridled will of individuals without regard for established law.

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One of the most notable religion cases in years

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Read: How Trump is reversing Obama's nondiscrimination legacy
The case is named for Kendra Espinoza, a single mother who lives near Kalispell, Montana, who took her two daughters out of public school after one struggled academically and the other faced repeated bullying. She enrolled her girls in a private school, Stillwater Christian, but, like the two other mothers named in the case, Espinoza struggled to pay tuition on her income as an office assistant and night janitor. In 2015, the Montana legislature created a scholarship incentive program to help families send their kids to private schools, religious or secular, which Espinoza says she looked forward to using. Before that could happen, however, the state department of revenue put a rule in place banning the program's funds from being used at religious schools, saying that would violate Montana's constitution.

The Supreme Court has to decide whether the kind of no-aid provision found in Montana's state constitution runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution. For nearly two decades, the Court has held that state voucher programs can include religious schools if a particular state wants the inclusion. Should justices rule in favor of Espinoza and the other parents in this case, they would be taking that principle a step further: If states want to have a voucher program, they can't exclude religious schools from participating.

It was inevitable that the Court would hear this kind of case eventually, Richard Garnett, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, told me. Four or five decades ago, the Court was much more hostile toward voucher programs than it is today: The justices thought "aid to religious schools itself is suspect," he said. Eventually, the Court softened this posture, in 2002 ruling in favor of an Ohio program that allowed state money to be used for tuition at private religious schools. Then, two years ago, the justices ruled in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, deciding by a vote of 7 to 2 that states could not exclude religious organizations from participating in neutral state programs, such as a grant for resurfacing playgrounds. Although the justices bent over backwards to make the limits of their decision clear, "everybody who read that knew: Of course we're talking about other forms of aid," Garnett said. "Everybody knew the next case was going to be one involving school funding."

The stakes of the Court's decision in Espinoza could reach far beyond Montana. More than 30 states have similar provisions banning public aid to private religious schools, according to a brief filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. These measures have long been a target of ire for religious-freedom advocates: Many came about during a late-19th-century wave of anti-Catholic legislation, when politicians stoked fear about Catholics' inability to place their duties as U.S. citizens over their allegiance to the pope. These provisions are generally referred to as Blaine amendments, after Representative James Blaine, who tried and failed to secure a federal constitutional amendment banning government aid to sectarian schools. The Supreme Court should find these measures unconstitutional, lawyers for Becket and other groups argue, so that states can craft "public programs without being weighed down by the bigotry of the past."

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important string of supreme court decisions

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persistent disappointments of media coverage

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Your Neighbor's Christian Education, Courtesy of Your Tax Dollars

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Read: How Trump is reversing Obama's nondiscrimination legacy The case is named for Kendra Espinoza, a single mother who lives near Kalispell, Montana, who took her two daughters out of public school after one struggled academically and the other faced repeated bullying.

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Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution - Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor | Exhibitions - Library of Congress

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Magna Carta exercised a strong influence both on the United States Constitution and on the constitutions of the various states. However, its influence was shaped by what eighteenth-century Americans believed Magna Carta to signify.

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Why state government can mandate vaccines

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Maine voters approved Ranked Choice Voting by the second largest referendum vote of the Maine people in 2016, but the Maine Legislature repealed our law in a late night special session last October when they thought that nobody was looking.

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The Constitution in American Life - Unit 1, Question 1: Human Nature and Political Power

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British Constitution -- What is a Constitution

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British Constitution -- What is a Constitution

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No American document has had a greater global impact than the Declaration of Independence. It has been fundamental to American history longer than any other text because it was the first to use the name "the United States of America": in this sense, the Declaration was the birth certificate of the American nation. It enshrined what came to be seen as the most succinct and memorable statement of the ideals on which that nation was founded: the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the consent of the governed; and resistance to tyranny. And, as the first successful declaration of independence in world history, its example helped to inspire countless movements for independence, self-determination, and revolution after 1776. One of its most enthusiastic admirers was the nineteenth-century Hungarian nationalist, Lajos Kossuth: for him, the Declaration was nothing less than "the noblest, happiest page in mankind's history."

The Declaration was addressed as much to "mankind" as it was to the population of the colonies. In the opening paragraph, the authors of the Declaration-Thomas Jefferson, the five-member Congressional committee of which he was part, and the Second Continental Congress itself-addressed "the opinions of Mankind" as they announced the necessity for

. . . one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them. . . .

After stating the fundamental principles-the "self-evident" truths-that justified separation, they submitted an extensive list of facts to "a candid world" to prove that George III had acted tyrannically. On the basis of those facts, his colonial subjects could now rightfully leave the British Empire. The Declaration therefore "solemnly Publish[ed] and Declare[d], That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES" and concluded with a statement of the rights of such states that was similar to the enumeration of individual rights in the Declaration's second paragraph in being both precise and open-ended:

. . . that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do.

This was what the Declaration declared to the colonists who could now become citizens rather than subjects, and to the powers of the earth who were being asked to choose whether or not to acknowledge the United States of America among their number.

The final paragraph of the Declaration announced that the United States of America were now available for alliances and open for business. The colonists needed military, diplomatic, and commercial help in their revolutionary struggle against Great Britain; only a major power, like France or Spain, could supply that aid. Thomas Paine had warned in Common Sense in January 1776 that "the custom of all courts is against us, and will be so, until by an independence, we take rank with other nations." So long as the colonists remained within the empire, they would be treated as rebels; if they organized themselves into political bodies with which other powers could engage, then they might become legitimate belligerents in an international conflict rather than treasonous combatants within a British civil war.

The Declaration of Independence was primarily a declaration of interdependence with the other powers of the earth. It marked the entry of one people, constituted into thirteen states, into what we would now call international society. It did so in the conventional language of the contemporary law of nations drawn from the hugely influential book of that title (1758) by the Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel, a copy of which Benjamin Franklin had sent to Congress in 1775. Vattel's was a language of rights and freedom, sovereignty and independence, and the Declaration's use of his terms was designed to reassure the world beyond North America that the United States would abide by the rules of international behavior. The goal of the Declaration's authors was still quite revolutionary: to extend the sphere of European international relations across the Atlantic Ocean by turning dependent colonies into independent political actors. The historical odds were greatly against them; as they knew well, no people had managed to secede from an empire since the United Provinces had revolted from Spain almost two centuries before, and no overseas colony had done so in modern times.

The other powers of the earth were naturally curious about what the Declaration said. By August 1776, news of American independence and copies of the Declaration itself had reached London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, as well as the Dutch Republic and Austria. By the fall of that year, Danish, Italian, Swiss, and Polish readers had heard the news and many could now read the Declaration in their own language as translations appeared across Europe. The document inspired diplomatic debate in France but that potential ally only began serious negotiations after the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777. The Franco-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce of February 1778 was the first formal recognition of the United States as "free and independent states." French assistance would, of course, be crucial to the success of the American cause. It also turned the American war into a global conflict involving Britain, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic in military operations around the globe that would shape the fate of empires in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean worlds.

The ultimate success of American independence was swiftly acknowledged to be of world-historical significance. "A great revolution has happened-a revolution made, not by chopping and changing of power in any one of the existing states, but by the appearance of a new state, of a new species, in a new part of the globe," wrote the British politician Edmund Burke. With Sir William Herschel's recent discovery of the ninth planet, Uranus, in mind, he continued: "It has made as great a change in all the relations, and balances, and gravitation of power, as the appearance of a new planet would in the system of the solar world." However, it is a striking historical irony that the Declaration itself almost immediately sank into oblivion, "old wadding left to rot on the battle-field after the victory is won," as Abraham Lincoln put it in 1857. The Fourth of July was widely celebrated but not the Declaration itself. Even in the infant United States, the Declaration was largely forgotten until the early 1790s, when it re-emerged as a bone of political contention in the partisan struggles between pro-British Federalists and pro-French Republicans after the French Revolution. Only after the War of 1812 and the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, did it become revered as the foundation of a newly emergent American patriotism.

Imitations of the Declaration were also slow in coming. Within North America, there was only one other early declaration of independence-Vermont's, in January 1777-and no similar document appeared outside North America until after the French Revolution. In January 1790, the Austrian province of Flanders expressed a desire to become a free and independent state in a document whose concluding lines drew directly on a French translation of the American Declaration. The allegedly self-evident truths of the Declaration's second paragraph did not appear in this Flemish manifesto nor would they in most of the 120 or so declarations of independence issued around the world in the following two centuries. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen would have greater global impact as a charter of individual rights. The sovereignty of states, as laid out in the opening and closing paragraphs of the American Declaration, was the main message other peoples beyond America heard in the document after 1776.

More than half of the 192 countries now represented at the United Nations have a founding document that can be called a declaration of independence. Most of those countries came into being from the wreckage of empires or confederations, from Spanish America in the 1810s and 1820s to the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Their declarations of independence, like the American Declaration, informed the world that one people or state was now asserting-or, in many cases in the second half of the twentieth century re-asserting-its sovereignty and independence. Many looked back directly to the American Declaration for inspiration. For example, in 1811, Venezuela's representatives declared "that these united Provinces are, and ought to be, from this day, by act and right, Free, Sovereign, and Independent States." The Texas declaration of independence (1836) likewise followed the American in listing grievances and claiming freedom and independence. In the twentieth century, nationalists in Central Europe and Korea after the First World War staked their claims to sovereignty by going to Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Even the white minority government of Southern Rhodesia in 1965 made their unilateral declaration of independence from the British Parliament by adopting the form of the 1776 Declaration, though they ended it with a royalist salutation: "God Save the Queen!" The international community did not recognize that declaration because, unlike many similar pronouncements made during the process of decolonization by other African countries, it did not speak on behalf of all the people of their country.

Invocations of the American Declaration's second paragraph in later declarations of independence are conspicuous by their scarcity. Among the few are those of Liberia (1847) and Vietnam (1945). The Liberian declaration of independence recognized "in all men, certain natural and inalienable rights: among these are life, liberty, and the right to acquire, possess, and enjoy property": a significant amendment to the original Declaration's right to happiness by the former slaves who had settled Liberia under the aegis of the American Colonization Society. Almost a century later, in September 1945, the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh opened his declaration of independence with the "immortal statement" from the 1776 Declaration: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." However, Ho immediately updated those words: "In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples of the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free." It would be hard to find a more concise summary of the message of the Declaration for the post-colonial predicaments of the late twentieth century.

The global history of the Declaration of Independence is a story of the spread of sovereignty and the creation of states more than it is a narrative of the diffusion and reception of ideas of individual rights. The farflung fortunes of the Declaration remind us that independence and popular sovereignty usually accompanied each other, but also that there was no necessary connection between them: an independent Mexico became an empire under a monarchy between 1821 and 1823, Brazil's independence was proclaimed by its emperor, Dom Pedro II in 1822, and, as we have seen, Ian Smith's Rhodesian government threw off parliamentary authority while professing loyalty to the British Crown. How to protect universal human rights in a world of sovereign states, each of which jealously guards itself from interference by outside authorities, remains one of the most pressing dilemmas in contemporary politics around the world.

So long as a people comes to believe their rights have been assaulted in a "long Train of Abuses and Usurpations," they will seek to protect those rights by forming their own state, for which international custom demands a declaration of independence. In February 2008, the majority Albanian population of Kosovo declared their independence of Serbia in a document designed to reassure the world that their cause offered no precedent for any similar separatist or secessionist movements. Fewer than half of the current powers of the earth have so far recognized this Kosovar declaration. The remaining countries, among them Russia, China, Spain, and Greece, have resisted for fear of encouraging the break-up of their own territories. The explosive potential of the American Declaration was hardly evident in 1776 but a global perspective reveals its revolutionary force in the centuries that followed. Thomas Jefferson's assessment of its potential, made weeks before his death on July 4, 1826, surely still holds true today: "an instrument, pregnant with our own and the fate of the world."

- David Armitage, Cambridge, MA

David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies in History at Harvard University. He is also an Honorary Professor of History at the University of Sydney. Among his books are The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007) and The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760-1860 (2010).

Reprinted with permission from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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The Declaration of Independence in Global Perspective - Declaration Project

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No American document has had a greater global impact than the Declaration of Independence. It has been fundamental to American history longer than any other text because it was the first to use the name "the United States of America": in this sense, the Declaration was the birth certificate of the American nation.

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Read only the first pages... gives an interesting twist on political equality

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Political Equality for Russel Sage Foundation

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The Constitution in American Life - U1 Q3 Benign Neglect, "Revolution" & American Constitutionalism

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Alaska Re-districting and one person one vote

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Alaska Re-districting and one person one vote

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Definitely scroll down to read the section
"Map rejected by court, ordered redrawn

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Note: Redistricting takes place every 10 years after completion of the United States Census. The information here pertains to the 2010 redistricting process. For information on more recent redistricting developments, see this article.

This page is about redistricting in Alaska.

The Alaska Redistricting Board is responsible for redistricting. Alaska is one of nine states that appoint a commission to carry out redistricting. Alaska's redistricting commission is composed of five members, chosen by the following:

Two chosen by the governor

One appointed by the Senate president

One appointed by the House speaker

One appointed by the Chief Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court

Note: Alaska is one of nine states that require federal approval of redistricting plans as mandated by the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

Cost of redistricting

Leadership

In October 2010, the Alaska Redistricting Board hired Ron Miller to serve as its executive director and provide direction to the board. However, Miller passed away on May 8, 2011, due to a heart attack. He was 65. The board hired Taylor Bickford as its new executive director.

According to Board Chairman Torgerson, "The State Constitution mandates we adopt one or more proposed redistricting plans within thirty (30) days of receiving the census data from the federal government. We will get the data no later than April 1 of next year and we must have a final plan within ninety (90) days of receipt of the data. Before then we need to get a small staff together, along with independent counsel and other experts, train staff and Board members in the redistricting software and finish setting up the Board's office in Anchorage, so we need Ron to get started right away."

In early January, the official state redistricting site was launched. Included on the site were an event calendar, contact information, board updates and a form to join the board's email list. Once local census population data was released, the Alaska Redistricting Board had 30 days to complete its map drawing process. The census data in question was to be delivered by April 1, 2011.

Redistricting board members

The five members of the 2011 Redistricting Board are listed below:

Robert Brodie (appointed by Senate president)

PeggyAnn McConnochie, Vice Chairman (appointed by governor)

Jim Holm (appointed by House speaker)

Marie Greene (appointed by Chief Justice)

John Torgerson, Chairman (appointed by governor)

Schedule of public meetings

The Alaska Redistricting Board held a series of public hearings throughout its work on legislative redistricting. The official schedule can be found here.

Final board meetings streamed live

The Alaska Redistricting Board streamed audio on alaskalegislature.tv from its final meetings, May 23-June 4.

Census results

2010 Census

Census data showed slowing growth for Alaska in the previous decade. While the state showed the 15th highest growth rate in the nation at 13.3 percent, this was the lowest growth rate for the state in 80 years, and much of that growth was homegrown. The state showed a net loss to emigration. Overall, the state of Alaska retained its single congressional seat.

On March 14, 2011, the state redistricting board received Alaska's local census data. This data was to guide mapmakers as they redrew state legislative districts. According to earlier Department of Labor estimates, Southeast and rural Alaska would have been the hardest hit. The greatest increases were said to be in the Matanuska-Susitna area. Fairbanks was also predicted to see an increase in representation. Both central Kenai Peninsula districts were said to remain close to their previous populations.

Legislative maps

Process begins with public meeting

Juneau representation

According to estimates, the city of Juneau grew at a slower rate than the rest of the state. Census population figures set ideal state Senate and House districts at 17,755 and 35,510, respectively. For this reason, Juneau's 30,661 residents were insufficient to maintain its two House seats and one Senate seat. Thus, Juneau's districts required 5,000 additional voters from surrounding districts.

The City of Juneau and its surrounding borough submitted two maps to the Alaska Redistricting Board to guide the board as it redrew political lines in the Southeast. Details of the plans can be found here.

Deadline looming for Redistricting Board

The Alaska Redistricting Board was to have preliminary maps drawn by April 14, 2011. In the run-up to the plan's release, there were several public meetings and work sessions.

Board releases preliminary redistricting plan

Others were concerned that the plans split some Native Alaskan lands and combined Anchorage and Fairbanks suburbs with rural districts. Still others were concerned about the splitting of the so-called "Senate Loop" and the pairing of State Senators Joe Thomas (D) and John B. Coghill (R).

Due to a pairing of Republican senators near Anchorage, the Chairman of the Alaska Republican Party, Randy Ruedrich, called the plan "troubling at best" and anti-incumbent. In addition, the left-leaning Alaskans for Fair Redistricting charged that the plan deliberately paired incumbents through small adjustments to legislative boundary, a tactic the group called gerrymandering. However, Ron Miller, late executive director of the board, argued that the locations of legislator residences were not a factor in drawing the new maps. Overall, the plan was believed to benefit Republican interests.

The Alaska Redistricting Board held several hearings to gather public input on the new plans, concluding with a statewide teleconference on May 6, 2010. The board then began work on the final plans.

Alaska Redistricting: Preliminary Redistricting Plan

Note: Numbers denote House districts, and letters denote Senate pairings.

Anchorage board controversy

Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan and Anchorage Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander submitted proposals to the Alaska Redistricting Board intended to guide the state's redistricting of the area. However, at least two Assembly members expressed anger over the submission of the plans. Elvi Gray-Jackson and Harriet Drummond claimed that the submissions did not reflect the consensus of the nonpartisan Assembly and instead represented Republican partisan interests. The plans, which appeared similar to those proposed by the Republican group Alaskans for Fair and Equitable Redistricting, would have paired several incumbents. However, Republican Party of Alaska Chair Randy Ruedrich argued that the plans were not partisan but intended to restore political boundaries to their earlier positions. Mayor Sullivan further argued that the plan better matched the geography and local political boundaries of Anchorage. Ossiander apologized, saying that while she identified herself as chair, she did not claim that her submission was the Assembly's official position.

Redistricting Board adopts plans for Southeast

The Alaska Redistricting Board adopted plans for the state's Southeast. As several leaders in the area had requested, the plan placed two Senate districts in the Southeast. House districts, however, were less in keeping with local requests. The plan paired downtown Juneau and Petersburg. In addition, Skagway was paired with some northern Juneau neighborhoods, and Prince of Wales Island lay in two House districts. Redistricting board member Peggy Ann McConnochie argued that the pairings reflected similar local interests in the fishing and cruise industry.

The plan paired four state representatives in two districts. Kyle Johansen (R) and Peggy Wilson (R) were to be paired in one district, and Bert Stedman (R) and Albert Kookesh (D) were to be paired in another. The plan also created a minority influence district in House District 2, with a 37 percent native population. Although Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho (D) argued that the maps appeared to follow constitutional principles, he still expected litigation over the final plan. The plans were not final until the full state plan was adopted.

Redistricting Board adopts statewide plan

The Alaska Redistricting Board adopted statewide redistricting plans in June 2011. The plan removed a House seat from the Southeast and added one in Mat-Su. In order to comply with the provisions of the Voting Rights Act and create a native-influence district, the plan created a sprawling Senate district that included Cordova, Dillingham and Kodiak. The district ranged from the Yukon-Kuskoskwim Delta to Yakutat. The plan also split the Aleutian Islands into different House districts, a move ruled unconstitutional by the Alaska Supreme Court in 1992. In total, the plan created six House districts and six Senate districts where Native representatives stood a good chance of being elected. Given population shifts, these districts were largely rural.

Democrats criticized the plan, which threatened to jeopardize the 10-10 partisan tie in the Alaska Senate. Democrats contended that the new plan could hurt the re-election chances of several Democratic lawmakers, including Bettye Davis, Bill Wielechowski, Joe Paskvan and Joe Thomas. According to Alaska Democratic Party Chairperson Patti Higgins, the state party was considering a court challenge. Alaskans for Fair Redistricting, a coalition of labor unions and Native American groups, also announced they were mulling a lawsuit. In response, Alaska GOP Chairman Randy Ruedrich argued that the maps were fair, noting that the plan paired only five sets of incumbents, with similar numbers of Republican and Democratic legislators affected.

In addition, the plan significantly re-numbered/re-lettered the state's legislative districts, beginning in Fairbanks rather than Ketchikan. Ordinarily, half (10) of Alaska's senators would be up for election in 2012, and half would be up for election in 2014. Alaska senators serve staggered four-year terms. However, in 2012, every senator except Dennis Egan (D) would face re-election due to substantial changes in their constituency. (Egan's district saw only marginal change.) Senators scheduled for the 2014 election were elected to two-year terms in 2012, preserving Alaska's staggered Senate elections. The final plan and legal documentation were officially completed on June 14, 2011.

Alaska Redistricting: Statewide Redistricting Plan

Note: Numbers denote House districts, and letters denote Senate pairings.

Board submits plan to DOJ

The full submission can be found here.

DOJ approves redistricting plan

Map rejected by court, ordered redrawn

The Alaska Supreme Court rejected the legislative plan, ultimately choosing an interim plan for the 2012 elections.

Early in January 2013, the Alaska Redistricting Board filed a petition with the state Supreme Court, asking them to reconsider their decision. According to attorneys for the board, the court overlooked or misunderstood important facts in the case and also violated the separation of powers doctrine.

Renewed efforts toward redistricting plan

The Alaska Redistricting Board took a step back to work toward a new redistricting plan by July 12, 2013, after an order from the Alaska Superior Court. Two residents brought suit against the board due in part to the slow pace of deliberations. Board members delayed deliberations on a new map until the United States Supreme Court rendered judgment on a case dealing with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Alaska Redistricting Board resumed deliberations in June to review submitted maps, tour the state for public hearings and reconvene on July 12 for a final vote on a new map. The Board voted to consider seven different Draft Plans and four Third Party Plans. On July 14, the Alaska Redistricting Board adopted its 2013 Proclamation Plan. The adopted plans can be found on the Alaska Redistricting Board website, here.

Citizen Activism

Groups formed to influence redistricting

Interest groups release maps

Alaskans for Fair Redistricting (AFFR) and Alaskans for Fair and Equitable Redistricting (AFFER) both released maps to the Redistricting Board for consideration. AFFR released their map on their website. AFFER also released maps on their website. These and other public map proposals were also found on the Alaska Redistricting Board homepage.

Native representation

Legal issues

Note: July 14, 2011, was the deadline for challenges to the state's redistricting plan.

Fairbanks borough lawsuit

On June 24, the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly voted 8-1 to sue the state over its new redistricting maps. The suit was officially filed on July 13, 2011. The community argued that the map impermissibly diluted Fairbanks voters by placing a significant portion of northwest Fairbanks in an expansive House district that included communities along the Bearing Sea coastline. In addition, the Borough Assembly argued that some of the city's voters had been unnecessarily split into two House districts. The Alaska Constitution requires that, "Each house district shall be formed of contiguous and compact territory containing as nearly as practicable a relatively integrated socio-economic area." The Assembly's resolution can be found here.

Fairbanks voters file separate suit

A group of Fairbanks residents filed a similar but separate lawsuit challenging the redistricting plan.

Petersburg lawsuit

Aleutians consider litigation

Mat-Su challenge vetoed

After a unanimous vote by the Borough Assembly in favor of challenging the state's redistricting plan, the Mat-Su mayor vetoed the resolution. The Assembly attempted to override the veto, but could not get the required supermajority. In passing the original resolution, the Assembly was primarily motivated by the wide-ranging House District 6, which includes Fishhook, Sutton-Chickaloon and Delta Junction.

Democrats decide against lawsuit

Ketchikan seeks to intervene in favor of maps

The Ketchikan Gateway Borough sought to join the lawsuit over state redistricting. However, unlike the three groups challenging the plans, Ketchikan attempted to join the state in defending the new maps. Ketchikan Borough attorney Scott Brandt-Erichsen argued that if the court agreed with the City of Petersburg's complaints, it could force the state to divide Ketchikan among multiple districts.

Board defends map via VRA

Plaintiffs inquire into board meetings

Attorneys for plaintiffs in the consolidated redistricting lawsuit looked into whether Redistricting Board meetings followed Alaska's Open Meetings Act. Attorney Michael White, who defended the state's 2001 maps, called the move a "red herring."

Fairbanks Borough out, Petersburg repositions

On October 25, the Fairbanks North Star Borough filed a motion to have itself removed from the consolidated redistricting lawsuit. The borough cited cost overruns as the reason for backing out of the suit. Following the Fairbanks decision, the City of Petersburg decided to consolidate its position, dropping some of its more tenuous arguments and focusing on the new districts' lack of compactness. The recent DOJ pre-approval made several of the city's claims harder to litigate. Petersburg was split into two districts under the new plan.

Withdrawal challenged, permitted

On October 31, the attorney for the group of Fairbanks citizens challenging the state's redistricting plan filed a partial opposition to the request for withdrawal. The decision to withdraw caused a significant controversy among Fairbanks residents since it was made in a private executive session and an original supporter (specifically named as a plaintiff in the borough lawsuit), Fairbanks Assemblyman Tim Beck, voiced opposition to the withdrawal. The partial opposition sought to block the withdrawal unless the vote was public and Beck consented. The borough argued that it did not need the consent of the other parties to withdraw, but the opponents argued that, since the cases had all been consolidated, other plaintiffs should have had input on the decision.

Ultimately, the court decided to allow the Fairbanks Borough to withdraw, deciding on November 3 to permit the move. The judge noted that the Fairbanks Assembly's open meeting rules were not at issue in the case and that the remaining plaintiffs were free to argue points raised by the borough's filings without amending their own.

Borough assembly to fund lawsuit

Petersburg challenge rejected

No appeal for Petersburg, Fairbanks residents remain

Preliminary ruling issued

Redistricting trial begins

On Monday, January 9, a trial began for the remaining Alaska redistricting challenge. The chairman of the Redistricting Board, a redistricting expert, and two state senators testified.

Redistricting trial ends

Judge orders four districts redrawn, appealed

On February 3, Judge Michael McConahy of Alaska's Fourth District Superior Court ruled that state House Districts 1, 2, 37 and 38 violated the Alaska Constitution. McConahy found that Districts 1, 2 and 37 violated the compactness criterion of the state constitution. In addition, he found that District 37 violated the contiguity condition and that District 38 violated the socio-economic integration condition. McConahy was less sympathetic toward the plaintiffs' claims of partisan gerrymandering, but he noted that the Voting Rights Act justifications offered for the districts were wanting. The Alaska Redistricting Board appealed the ruling with respect to Districts 37 and 38, defending the districts as drawn to comply with the Voting Rights Act. Plaintiffs planned to appeal McConahy's decision on Districts 6 and 38, arguing that the problems with District 38 were not fully recognized in the ruling. Oral arguments before the Alaska Supreme Court were set for March 13.

AK Supreme Court rules on maps

On Tuesday, March 13, the Alaska Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a lawsuit against the state's new legislative districts.

The Supreme Court's ruling can be found here.

Timeline dropped

Dates and other information on the meetings can be found here.

Board works on new map

Revised maps approved

The current map can be found here.

The original redistricting map can be found here.

The interim map can be found here.

The revised map can be found here.

Deadline for objections set

Revised maps thrown out

The ruling in the case can be found here.

Details and teleconference info for the meeting can be found here.

Board appeals, asks for interim map

Supreme Court rejects revised maps

On May 10, the Alaska Supreme Court rejected the Alaska Redistricting Board's revised redistricting map. A previous version of the map had already been struck down by the court. Although the ruling reiterated the need to more closely adhere to the Alaska Constitution, it also gave more specific instructions regarding the map. The court ordered the Board to redraw House Districts 31 through 34 and Senate Districts P and Q. The court had previously instructed the Board to make Voting Rights Act adjustments only after the state constitutional requirements were satisfied. However, this time the court instructed the board not to make VRA adjustments since, according to the court, the Act did not justify diverging from the state constitution for the districts in question. The Board had until May 15 to revise the plans. Objections had to be filed by May 18.

Board revises plan

Supreme Court picks interim map

On May 22, the Alaska Supreme Court selected an interim redistricting plan for the 2012 elections. The Alaska Redistricting Board's first revised plan was approved as the interim plan. The Board's second and latest revision was not selected. While the court did not formally rule on the latter plan, it was expected to issue instructions for revising the plan's southeast districts. The court expressed concern that the latest version would not pass muster under the Voting Rights Act.

The interim plan can be found here.

The Supreme Court order can be found here.

On June 15, a U.S. District Judge ruled that Alaska's election plans could move forward while the state's interim redistricting map waited to be evaluated by a three-judge federal panel. The lawsuit was filed by a group of Alaska natives. They argued that the map could not be implemented until it was precleared by the DOJ. Specifically, they asked the judge to suspend implementation of the map until their case could be heard by a planned, three-judge panel. While this request was denied, the maps could still have been suspended by the panel, which would have placed the state's August 28 primary elections in jeopardy.

State challenges pre-clearance requirement

Partisan Registration by District

Alaska's One Congressional District in November 2010

2001 Redistricting

As one of seven states with an at-large Congressional District, Alaska's redistricting issues were always primarily focused on state legislative seats. When, in May of 2001, the Redistricting Board released its plans, two dissenting members released their report that frankly criticized the majority plan. One dissent cited the fact that several Republicans had been primed to be faced off against one another but no Democrats were cast in a similar position. The 30-day period for any Alaskan to file a challenge was enough time to birth nine lawsuits, all of which were consolidated into one case at the end of August 2011.

That lawsuit got a boost a week later, when the Republican-dominated legislature voted to join the lawsuit, again citing the allegation that the redistricting map unfairly made members of the GOP but not Democrats compete against fellow elected party members for seats. The lawsuit was set for January 2002. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice pre-cleared the already drawn redistricting map in early October, meaning the new boundaries legally took effect pending the outcome of the trial. Days later, a Superior Court judge allowed the state legislature to remain party to the consolidated lawsuit although they had technically missed the deadline to file as a plaintiff.

As the trial date neared and the Redistricting Board, facing the bill for the lawsuit, began to compute expected costs, a new worry arose. If the trial used up the funds allotted for redistricting, the Board would be legally required to petition the legislature for more money, but the legislature was already party to the lawsuit, opposing the Redistricting Board. Ultimately, the Board voted to advance $300,000 to the law firm representing them, an amount they claimed wiped out everything they had left to cover the entire redistricting process.

A secondary concern centered around Kevin Jardell, chief of staff to then-member of the Alaska House of Representatives Joe Green. Having failed in a bid to be named executive of the Redistricting Board, Mr. Jardell retained his staff position and, on behalf of Representative Green, sat in on at least 15 meetings of the Redistricting Board. Agreeing with Republican lawmakers that the Board's plan was biased, Mr. Jardell privately prepared his suggested map and presented it to the Board. In that capacity, he was working for the law firm representing the state legislature and the later body attested that Jardell was on unpaid leave when he worked on his own plan. Nonetheless, Jardell was subpoenaed and, on Rep. Green's request, legislative attorneys filed a motion to quash the subpoena and shield Jardell from future attempts to question him. Local editorial boards howled over the idea that Jardell was defended for work he had ostensibly undertaken as a private citizen by the legislature's staff attorneys, who drew a salary from the public treasury.

Around the same time, court employees were working through the objections and challenges filed against the approaching trial in a bid to minimize the complexity and time of the case. One significant challenge came from military personnel stationed in Anchorage, who been consolidated into one District. They claimed such an action diluted their political effectiveness and, by minimizing the number of civilians in the District, lowered the pool of potential candidates so much as to infringe on their rights. Led by Paul Volland, chief attorney for the Redistricting Board, that challenge was thrown out. A mirror image of that complaint came from Little Delta Junction, a remote and tiny town by Alaskan standards. Residents claimed that, having been put into two Districts under the 2001 plan, what little legislative influence they had was wiped out. That complaint also was thrown out.

Republicans won a few victories of their own shortly thereafter when Anchorage Superior Court Judge Mark Rindner, who also presided over the military base and Delta Junction hearings, ruled that the Chugiak District violated the compactness requirement and that District 16, around Peter's Creek and the Eagle River, violated a requirement to respect socioeconomic similarities. Nearly as soon as pretrial motions were settled, Judge Rindner again sat, this time presiding over the combined case challenging the Redistricting Board's 3-2 decision.

On March 22, 2002, the Supreme Court went much further. Twenty-two of 40 House seats, including all 17 in Anchorage, and 12 of 20 Senate seats, were sent back to the Redistricting Board to be redrawn. Republicans were thrilled with the holding and the Redistricting Board set a May 2002 hearing to begin reworking the Districts. However, they reported only $38,000 on hand, meaning it needed more money from the legislature. Ultimately, a supplemental spending bill gave the Board $50,000 for redrawing boundaries, a far cry from the $454,000 that had been requested, and an amount that allowed nothing for $200,000 in unpaid legal bills.

On April 14, 2002, the Board drew a new map and voted to pass it on unanimously. Sparing Alaska a second round of legalistic bickering, the Supreme Court dismissed all challenges to the new map on May 28, 2002.

Deviation from "Ideal Districts"

Congressional Districts

N/A

State House Districts

9.96%

State Senate Districts

9.32%

Under federal law, districts may vary from an 'Ideal District' by up to 10 percent, though the lowest number achievable is preferred. 'Ideal Districts' are computed through simple division of the number of seats for any office into the population at the time of the Census.

Lawsuits related to the 2000 Census

A single case came out of the 2001 redistricting process, and progressed through the Supreme Court and Redistricting Board on its way to resolution.

In re 2001 Redistricting Cases v. Redistricting Board, No. 3AN-01-8914CI (3rd Dist. Anchorage, Feb. 1, 2002) : Of Alaska's 40 House districts, a judge found two of them to be unconstitutional. One was faulted for failing to be sufficiently compact. The second was a more complex matter, not meeting the requirement in article 6, § 6 that districts be "as nearly as practicable a relatively integrated socio-economic area." Pending appeal to Alaska's Supreme Court, the ruling was stayed.

In re 2001 Redistricting Cases, No. S-10504, 44 P.3d 141 (Alaska Mar. 21, 2002) : The Supreme Court vacated the lower court's stay, affirming the decision with exceptions. The case was remanded to the superior court with instructions that it be further remanded to the Redistricting Board. Overall, the Supreme Court found that two districts violated compactness, two violated § 6, and a further 16 violated the equal rights guarantee, a level that occurred because Alaska's state constitution requires a higher standard than federal law. Lastly, the court found a 6.9 percent deviation from an ideal district was not justified under the Voting Rights Act.

In re 2001 Redistricting Cases, No. S-10615, 47 P.3d 1089 (Alaska May 24, 2002) : The Redistricting Board followed the Supreme Court's instructions and submitted an Amended Final Plan to the superior court. On May 9, 2002, the latter approved the plan and the Supreme Court affirmed the decision.

Ballot measures

The following measures have appeared on the Alaska ballot pertaining to redistricting:

Constitutional explanation

With respect to redistricting, the Alaska Constitution provides authority for a redistricting commission in Article VI. All 11 sections of Article VI were altered by the Alaska Reapportionment Board, Measure 3 (1998).

External links

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Redistricting in Alaska after the 2010 census - Ballotpedia

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Note: Redistricting takes place every 10 years after completion of the United States Census. The information here pertains to the 2010 redistricting process. For information on more recent redistricting developments, see this article. This page is about redistricting in Alaska. The Alaska Redistricting Board is responsible for redistricting.

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Alaska joins lawsuit against vaccine mandate

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Alaska joins lawsuit against vaccine mandate

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Alaska is one of 26 states that officially filed federal lawsuits on Friday challenging the validity of President Joe Biden's mandate that private employers with at least 100 employees require vaccination or test unvaccinated employees weekly.

Biden's mandate was issued on Sept. 9. On Thursday, the deadline was formally announced as Jan. 4, according to an emergency temporary standard issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Alaska joined a lawsuit filed Friday by the Missouri attorney general on behalf of 11 states. The rest of the 26 total states also formed coalitions to file their lawsuits.

"The Biden Administration's OSHA rule was a longtime coming and we have been preparing for months now in anticipation," said Gov. Dunleavy. "President Biden's attempt to force mandates upon the nation is unconstitutional - it is an attack against the individual's freedom and a threat against liberty. My administration previously issued an Administrative Order which represents my commitment to Alaskans against President Biden's vaccine mandates. Alaskans can rest assured I will take every action possible to defend them and their rights. I am not anti-vaccine; I am anti-mandate, and I will stand up against federal overreach."

The lawsuit filed Friday is separate from the one filed last week by 10 states including Alaska. That lawsuit challenged Biden's vaccine mandate for federal contractors, which gave a Dec. 8 deadline for businesses with existing contracts or those who wish to obtain federal contracts in in the future to comply.

Dunleavy issued an administrative order on Nov. 2 further clarifying his intent to push back against Biden's mandates.

"If Congress has not passed clear and specific legislation authorizing action, the federal government cannot impose it's will on states and their residents," wrote Dunleavy.

The order says that state agencies cannot use funds or personnel, using the caveat "to further a federal vaccine mandate for employers ... to the extent allowable by law."

The mandate for employers of over 100 people will potentially affect over 1,000 Alaskan employers, according to the University of Alaska's Small Business Development Center Executive Director Jon Bittner.

"The ones having trouble filling jobs are probably going to look at this as a net positive, the ones afraid they'll lose employees less so," Bittner said.

There are over 193 million people in the U.S. who have been fully vaccinated, which accounts for 58.2% of the entire population. In Alaska, 365,682 residents over the age of 12 have been fully vaccinated, which makes up 60.6% of the state's population. While there is existing court precedent set regarding mandated vaccinations, Dunleavy further published an op-ed detailing his position on the previous vaccine mandate for federal contractors.

"OSHA's emergency temporary standard violates the separation of powers and infringes upon the right of all Americans to decide for themselves whether a COVID-19 vaccine is right for them," Attorney General Taylor said. "This mandate is unconstitutional, and we have made strong arguments as to why the courts should block implementation of OSHA's rule."

The rate of new COVID-19 cases per capita over the last week in Alaska is 562.9, nearly four times the national rate and the highest of any state in the U.S.

"One of the main problems here is that federal agencies are not being consistent in their application or interpretation of this mandate. The worst-case scenario would be if the contracts are cancelled, causing major financial impacts to all the agencies and to services to the public. We will be pulling more specifics together moving forward," said Department of Law spokesperson Aaron Sadler on Friday. "Pursuant to the Governor's administrative order, the Department of Law will challenge this mandate, and we expect to take action after the rule is formally published on Friday."

Alaska joined Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming by entering the petition filed on Friday.

"The President is not a king and he does not get to make up the law and control the individual," said Dunleavy. "This is why he lost the eviction moratorium and why he will lose again. Health measures are a traditional state and local power under the 10th Amendment."
Copyright 2021 KTUU. All rights reserved.

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Alaska one of 26 states to file lawsuits challenging Biden's vaccine mandate for large companies

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Alaska is one of 26 states that officially filed federal lawsuits on Friday challenging the validity of President Joe Biden's mandate that private employers with at least 100 employees require vaccination or test unvaccinated employees weekly. Biden's mandate was issued on Sept. 9.

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The biggest political debate of the decade kicked off in earnest Wednesday as the Alaska Redistricting Board met in an all-day session to set in motion what promises to be a divisive process for redrawing the state's 40 legislative districts.

This year's redistricting effort is fraught with suspicion because the state board is heavily skewed toward Republicans. A number of Democrats testifying Wednesday made it clear that they don't trust the board to fairly adjust legislative boundaries based on population shifts and that Democrats could be significantly shortchanged.

About 20 people, most of them Democrats and many from Southeast Alaska and rural areas, offered comments, many that criticized the board from the start for making it difficult to call into the meeting or access material. They also questioned the openness and fairness of the process.

Board chairman John Torgerson was immediately put off and reacted somewhat angrily to one caller. "You realize we just got the census data yesterday and it was on the web in a couple of hours," he remarked, adding, "I'm not sure your comments are justified."

Several who commented questioned the board's process -- including the fact that public comment was taken at the beginning of the meeting before information was released or decisions had been made that they might have wanted to comment on. A few openly suspected that board members had been meeting privately with political operatives who were lobbying them on how to draw the boundaries.

Jake Metcalfe, a former Alaska Democratic Party chairman and Anchorage School Board member who chairs the party's redistricting committee, politely but bluntly asked if any board members had met with Randy Ruedrich, the chair of the Alaska Republican Party. Metcalfe cautioned against "back door politics" and urged the board to conduct all its business openly and publicly.

That drew another pointed response from Torgerson who said, "I've met with Ruedrich as much as I've met with you and that's zero."

Other board members also said that they had not met with the Republican Party chairman. Ruedrich wasn't at the meeting Wednesday but did testify by phone.

The partisan crossfire is nothing new in Alaska's redistricting effort. The stakes are huge -- literally political control of the state. Alaska is divided into 40 legislative districts with 40 representatives and 20 senators. Now, the Senate is split 10-10 between Republicans and Democrats, while the House has 24 Republicans and 16 Democrats. Democrats are worried that the redistricting board will finagle the new boundaries to force incumbent Democrats to run against each other or draw the boundaries so tightly around heavily Democratic areas that what's left are a few Democratic districts and lots of Republican strongholds.

New census data provided to the state this week puts Alaska's total population at 710,231, up from 626,920 in 2000. The board divides the total population by 40 legislative districts and bases the size of each on 17,755 residents. Numbers released by the board late Tuesday showed that while most areas of the state remained stable population-wise or even grew by a few hundred residents, the Matanuska Susitna Valley and Fairbanks gained thousands of new residents. So to keep the size of each district roughly even at 17,755 some districts, especially in Southeast Alaska and the rural Interior will need to be reconfigured probably significantly.

House District 40, the huge northern Alaska district that covers much of the top of the state, actually turned out to have held its own population-wise and did not come in significantly lower than the goal.

Ten years ago it was the Democrats, under then Gov. Tony Knowles, who were criticized for skewing the process. A 2006 review of that redistricting effort by Gordon Harrison, a longtime legislative director and academic who was the board's executive director, sets the stage for this year's political scrum as well. In 2001, the board "did not function as a bipartisan redistricting commission," he wrote in a piece for the Alaska Law Review. "There is no reason to expect it to do so in the future."

The current five-member redistricting board has four Republican members and one Democrat. And, if Harrison's analysis of what went wrong last time around is any guideline, the way the board members are chosen creates probably the biggest problem when it comes to partisan advantage.

In 1998, voters narrowly passed a constitutional amendment that created the board, which was thought to be independent in that it was not being overseen by the Legislature or the executive branch. The governor gets to name two members; the Senate President names one; the Speaker of the House names one and the Chief Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court picks the fifth.

For the current board, Republican Gov. Sean Parnell chose John Torgerson of Soldotna, a former GOP senator, and Peggy Ann McConnochie, a Juneau real estate broker and member of the Capital City Republican Women. Republican Senate President Gary Stevens named Robert Brodie of Kodiak, also a real estate broker and head of the Kodiak Republican Party. Republican House Speaker Mike Chenault chose former Republican lawmaker Jim Holm of Fairbanks.

Chief Justice Walter Carpeneti picked Marie Greene, a Kotzebue resident who is president of NANA Regional Corp. and a Democratic supporter.

"That one party will have at least a three-member majority on the Board to give the nod to its side's proposal is virtually assured by the method of appointing Board members," Harrison wrote, adding "members are named by elected officials who have a vital in the outcome of the panel's work and they should not be expected to be impartial. Indeed, it is likely impossible to create a genuinely and reliably neutral commission to deal with redistricting issues."

Harrison noted that 10 years ago, the three-member majority that prevailed had been appointed by Knowles or Supreme Court Chief Justice Dana Fabe. The board ultimately adopted a redistricting plan drawn up by Alaskans For Fair Redistricting, a group that billed itself as non-partisan made up of Native leaders, unions and environmentalists. The Democratic Party was not formally affiliated with the group, but Harrison said the party's chair was instrumental in its founding. He also wrote that Knowles' staff was "deeply and openly involved" in AFFR's work and that the state Department of Law provided support for the group.

AFFR is involved in this year's effort as well, and had members present at the meeting Wednesday. The group's chair, AFL-CIO president Vince Beltrami, couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday after the meeting.

But Vicki Otte, who was on the redistricting board 10 years ago and now is working with AFFR, said the group counts a lot of non-partisan and independent voters among its membership as well as both parties.

She said she is staunchly non-partisan and recently helped with Sen. Lisa Murkowski's write-in campaign. "I want to keep a fair and balanced Legislature," she said. "The fear today is with the makeup of the board. It's going to hurt us, it's going to hurt rural Alaska."

She dismissed Harrison's criticism of the 2001 process and pointed to the relatively balanced political distribution in the Legislature as evidence that the board did a good and fair job 10 years ago.

Ron Miller, the board's current executive director, also rejected the idea that the board would try to shape the boundaries to favor Republicans. In an interview earlier this week, he talked about the process as being driven by numbers and rules that the board must follow. In the end, the plan will likely end up in court -- as it has every year -- where judges will decide the ultimate boundaries.

"There's no one running the process except the board," Miller said regarding concerns that the Republican Party chairman, Randy Ruedrich, might be involved.

Miller said the board plans to conduct an open and transparent process that will provide plenty of opportunity for the public to watch how the lines are drawn. Now that the census numbers are in, the board has 30 days -- until 9:45 a.m. April 14, they figured -- to adopt a preliminary plan. Then the board has another 60 days to gather public comment and adopt a final plan.

The board set a fairly packed meeting schedule including taking public testimony in at least five cities during the next couple weeks.

At an earlier meeting, they agreed to pay themselves $400 a day for the days they are in session. Torgerson said Wednesday the board's overall budget is about $3.2 million, compared to about $5 million for the 2001 process.

The board spent much of Wednesday afternoon discussing and setting the meeting schedule. But it also took up a request by Ruedrich to reallocate the prison population to their residence addresses. Now inmates are counted in the district in which they are incarcerated.

Ruedrich told the board there is a disproportionate number of Alaska Native prisoners in the system -- 35 percent compared to a Native population generally of 15 percent. He suggested many of those people are from rural Alaska so counting them in their home towns and villages would help fill out lagging numbers in rural districts.

The board didn't act on the request and said it would be too difficult in such a short time to get the residence addresses for thousands of inmates and try to work them into the appropriate district. The board's attorney, Michael White, also wondered whether it was legal for the board to do it or if a change had to come through the Legislature.

The board also discussed at some length what to do about senate seats that are not up for reelection in 2012, when the new boundaries take effect. Half the Senate is not up again until 2014 -- 10 districts -- and board members are considering whether it's fair to what might be thousands of new voters in a revamped district to let those senators stay without a new vote. In 2002, seven senate terms were "truncated" and those members had to run again, White said.

Board member Bob Brodie suggested truncating them all because he expects every district will be substantially changed.

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The biggest political debate of the decade kicked off in earnest Wednesday as the Alaska Redistricting Board met in an all-day session to set in motion what promises to be a divisive process for redrawing the state's 40 legislative districts. This year's redistricting effort is fraught with suspicion because the state board is heavily skewed toward Republicans.

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Austin, Texas - A federal judge on Wednesday ordered a halt to the enforcement of Texas' ban on mask mandates in the state's schools.

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled in Austin that the ban ordered by Republican Governor Greg Abbott violated a federal law protecting disabled students' access to public education. The nonprofit advocacy group Disabled Rights Texas argued that Abbott's ban prohibited accommodations for disabled children particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.

The ruling frees school districts to set their own rules, according to The Texas Tribune, which describes itself as "a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom."

Yeakel prohibited Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from suing school districts that require students to wear masks as a safety measure. Paxton already had sued 15 districts to overturn those local mask mandates.

"Governor Abbott's executive order clearly violates federal law, and Attorney General Paxton's enforcement of the order against school districts is now stopped," Kym Davis Johnson, of Disability Rights Texas, said in a statement. "As the court found, Texas is not above federal law, and state officials cannot prevent school districts from providing accommodations to students who are especially vulnerable to the risks of COVID-19."

Paxton tweeted that he said he "strongly disagreed" with the ruling, adding that his "agency is considering all legal avenues to challenge this decision."

Disability Rights Texas sued in federal court on behalf of several Texas families in late August to try to stop the mandates ban, the Tribune says.

Disability Rights Texas litigation attorney Kym Davis Rogers said in a statement that, "No student should be forced to make the choice of forfeiting their education or risking their health, and now they won't have to."

According to the Tribune, Rogers said she doesn't rule out the state appealing the decision in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because Texas has gone that route before, most recently over its strict new abortion law.

The Tribune noted that, "A recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll showed that 57% of voters support mask requirements in indoor public spaces based on local conditions, while 58% support mask requirements for students and staff in public schools. Forty percent oppose the requirements at indoor public places and 39% oppose the requirements at schools."

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Federal judge blocks Texas ban on school mask mandates

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Austin, Texas - A federal judge on Wednesday ordered a halt to the enforcement of Texas' ban on mask mandates in the state's schools. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled in Austin that the ban ordered by Republican Governor Greg Abbott violated a federal law protecting disabled students' access to public education.

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Gerrymandering -- drawing political boundaries to give your party a numeric advantage over an opposing party -- is a difficult process to explain. If you find the notion confusing, check out the chart above -- adapted from one posted to Reddit this weekend -- and wonder no more.

Suppose we have a very tiny state of fifty people. Thirty of them belong to the Blue Party, and 20 belong to the Red Party. And just our luck, they all live in a nice even grid with the Blues on one side of the state and the Reds on the other.

Now, let's say we need to divide this state into five districts. Each district will send one representative to the House to represent the people. Ideally, we want the representation to be proportional: if 60 percent of our residents are Blue and 40 percent are Red, those five seats should be divvied up the same way.

Fortunately, because our citizens live in a neatly ordered grid, it's easy to draw five lengthy districts -- two for the Reds , and three for the Blues. Voila! Perfectly proportional representation, just as the Founders intended. That's grid 1 above, "perfect representation."

Now, let's say instead that the Blue Party controls the state government, and they get to decide how the lines are drawn. Rather than draw districts vertically they draw them horizontally, so that in each district there are six Blues and four Reds. You can see that in grid 2 above, "compact but unfair."

With a comfortable Blue majority in this state, each district elects a blue candidate to the House. The Blues win 5 seats and the Reds don't get a single one. Oh well! All's fair in love and politics.

In the real world, the results of this latter scenario are similar to what we see in New York, though there are no good examples of where a majority party gives itself a clean-sweep. In 2012, Democrats received 66 percent of the popular House vote. But they won 21 out of 27 House seats, or three more than you'd expect from the popular vote alone. And from a purely geometric standpoint, New York's congressional districts aren't terribly irregular -- at least not compared to other states.

Finally, what if the Red Party controls the state government? The Reds know they're at a numeric disadvantage. But with some creative boundary drawing -- the type you see in grid 3, "neither compact nor fair" -- they can slice the Blue population up such that they only get a majority in two districts. So despite making up 40 percent of the population, the Reds win 60 percent of the seats. Not bad!

In the real world, this is similar to what we see in Pennsylvania. In 2012, Democrats won 51 percent of the popular House vote. But the only won 5 out of 18 House seats -- fewer than one third. This was because when Pennsylvania Republicans redrew the state's Congressional districts, they made highly irregular districts that look like the one below, PA-7, one of the most geographically irregular districts in the nation.

Now, this exercise is of course a huge simplification. In the real world people don't live in neatly-ordered grids sorted by political party. But for real-world politicians looking to give themselves an advantage at redistricting time, the process is exactly the same, as are the results for the parties that gerrymander successfully.

The easiest way to solve this issue, of course, would be to take the redistricting process out of human hands entirely. There is already software capable of doing just that -- good luck getting any politicians to agree to it, though.

The process of redrawing district lines to give an advantage to one party over another is called "gerrymandering." Here's how it works. (Video: Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)

More on gerrymandering:
Update: An earlier version of this post used California as an example of a majority party giving itself a bigger majority through redistricting. California's districts are drawn by an independent commission, not by the parties. This computer programmer solved gerrymandering in his spare time "
America's most gerrymandered congressional districts "
What 60 years of political gerrymandering looks like "
One easy way to end gerrymandering: Stop letting politicians draw their own districts "
Note: The chart above was adapted from one posted to Reddit this weekend. Credit to redditor N8theGr8 for finding the original image. He couldn't track down the original creator using a reverse image search, and neither could I. If you made the original chart, drop me a line so I can give you credit! UPDATE: The original creator reached out -- his name is Stephen Nass, and he posted the original chart on Facebook on Feb. 21.

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This is the best explanation of gerrymandering you will ever see

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By simplifying gerrymandering we see how problematic it really is.

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Native language speakers win voting rights lawsuit against state

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A federal judge in Anchorage ruled Wednesday morning that the state elections division violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act by failing to provide ballot and candidate information in Native languages to Yup'ik and Gwich'in speakers in three rural regions of Alaska.

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The Supreme Court first forced states to draw their legislative districts with roughly equal populations inside them in two landmark decisions: Baker v. Carr in 1962 and Reynolds v. Sims in 1964. The two decisions enshrined the one-person, one-vote rule in American constitutional law.

Transforming those precedents into a requirement that states use eligible voters instead of total population went too far, the Court ruled. "Adopting voter-eligible apportionment as constitutional command would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 States and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries," Ginsburg wrote. "Appellants have shown no reason for the Court to disturb this longstanding use of total population."

But, she noted, Monday's decision did not address whether states could use voter-eligible apportionment when drawing legislative districts, only ruling that states were not required to do so. In his concurrence with the Court's judgment, Justice Samuel Alito seized on this distinction to hint that a future case could allow apportionment methods beyond the status quo.

"Whether a State is permitted to use some measure other than total population is an important and sensitive question that we can consider if and when we have before us a state districting plan that, unlike the current Texas plan, uses something other than total population as the basis for equalizing the size of districts," he wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas went even further in his own concurrence. "In my view, the majority has failed to provide a sound basis for the one-person, one-vote principle because no such basis exists," he wrote. Instead of continuing the "misguided search" for one, Thomas instead urged his colleagues to leave the question of apportionment to the states themselves. "There is no single 'correct' method of apportioning state legislatures," he concluded.

Evenwel was the latest brainchild of the Project on Fair Representation, a conservative legal nonprofit that specializes in mounting legal attacks on the legislative pillars of the American civil-rights movement. The group's highest-profile victory was in 2013 in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It also filed an amicus brief in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project last year, urging the justices to strike down a key part of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. (In the end, Justice Anthony Kennedy joined with the liberals to save it.)

The group is also part of Fisher v. University of Texas this term, which targets affirmative-action policies in higher education. A ruling in that case is still pending.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Matt Ford is a former associate editor at The Atlantic.

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U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to One Person, One Vote

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The Supreme Court first forced states to draw their legislative districts with roughly equal populations inside them in two landmark decisions: Baker v. Carr in 1962 and Reynolds v. Sims in 1964. The two decisions enshrined the one-person, one-vote rule in American constitutional law.

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US Representative Bruce Poliquin, a Maine Republican, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday morning hoping to stop what is on track to be the first congressional election in US history decided by ranked-choice voting.

Poliquin's reelection contest against Democratic nominee Jared Golden was the most competitive US House race in New England - and one of the most closely watched in the country. Poliquin received the most votes, but under ranked-choice voting, the Democrat, who finished second in the initial round, could come out on top.

Either way a judge decides on the matter will have implications outside of Maine. This could be either the first member of Congress elected by this method or the practice could be ruled illegal, halting a national movement in Massachusetts and other states to expand ranked choice voting.

Last week, Poliquin received 46.3 percent of the vote and Golden received 45.6 percent, with two independent candidates splitting up the remaining 8.1 percent. In any other state or previous election year in Maine, Poliquin would have been officially declared the winner for a third term in Washington.

But this year, Maine implemented a ranked-choice voting system that allows voters to pick their first choice, second choice, third choice, and so on for federal races. Under the system, if a candidate is the first choice of at least 50 percent of voters, then that candidate automatically wins.

If not, the votes of the candidate with the least support are reallocated to whoever those voters picked as their second choice. If that doesn't push a candidate over 50 percent, then the votes of the candidate with the second fewest votes are reallocated.

Poliquin fell short of the 50 percent mark. So ranked-choice voting has kicked in.

On the ground, Maine's secretary of state is far from declaring a winner in the race. After it was official that no candidate received a majority of the votes in the first round, all the ballots from around Maine's Second District were collected by a private courier and brought to Augusta, where the votes have been feeding into a machine since Friday.

It may take several weeks until the process is finished.

But on Tuesday, Poliquin and three other voters from the district filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Bangor to stop the counting. The 25-page filing seeks an injunction blocking the Maine secretary of state's office from using ranked-choice voting because, it argues, it violates the US Constitution in several ways, one of them being the "one person, one vote" clause.

At a press conference in Augusta on Tuesday afternoon, Poliquin said that it wasn't clear if ranked choice voting was even legal.

"This is the first example in the country where the voting to elect a federal office holder is illegal," Poliquin said after declaring himself the winner based on Tuesday's unofficial returns.

The lawsuit also claims that federal courts in the past have ruled that a candidate who receives a plurality of the votes is what the Constitution defines as a winner.

Golden's campaign manger Jon Breed said, "Any attempt by Bruce Poliquin to change the rules after votes have already been cast is an affront to the law and to the people of Maine. If Rep. Poliquin's concerns were anything other than in self interest, he should have filed this lawsuit before votes were cast, or when the Maine Republican Party challenged Maine's election system last year.

"Bruce Poliquin knew the rules going into this election. The Secretary of State must count every vote according to Maine law until a majority winner is clear," Breed said.

Maine Governor Paul LePage, a Republican, has called ranked-choice voting "one person, five votes" and has publicly encouraged Poliquin to sue over the issue.

Maine's Supreme Judicial Court has already ruled that ranked-choice voting cannot be used in state races for governor or the Legislature because Maine's constitution specifically allows for a plurality of votes to be good enough for a winner.

But the congressional race is a federal race. Even as the lawsuit was filed, Maine's secretary of state's office said it would continue its recount of the Poliquin-Golden race.

"We are aware of the pending litigation. We are continuing to process ballots to complete the tabulation of votes and will continue to do so. If we receive a court order to halt the process we will review it with our legal advisors," said Kristen Muszynski, a spokeswoman for Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap.

James Pindell can be reached at james.pindell@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jamespindell.

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washington metropolitan area transit authority

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Maine US House candidate seeks injunction to stop ranked-choice voting - The Boston Globe

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US Representative Bruce Poliquin, a Maine Republican, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday morning hoping to stop what is on track to be the first congressional election in US history decided by ranked-choice voting. Poliquin's reelection contest against Democratic nominee Jared Golden was the most competitive US House race in New England - and one of the most closely watched in the country.

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After struggling for years to clean up its air, Fairbanks still faces contentious wood smoke problem

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The area has been failing to meet a federal air quality standard since 2009, and this year is the deadline for meeting that standard. But after a decade of struggle, trying to get people to cut back on wood burning is still as contentious as ever.

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After struggling for years to clean up its air, Fairbanks still faces contentious wood smoke problem

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Felons voting

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Felony Disenfranchisement | The Sentencing Project

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A striking 6.1 million Americans are prohibited from voting due to laws that disenfranchise citizens convicted of felony offenses. Felony disenfranchisement rates vary by state, as states institute a wide range of disenfranchisement policies.

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A case in which the Court held that Alabama's apportionment of the state legislature was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because representation was not based on population of counties.

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The Covid-19 delta variant's spread may force federal and state authorities to re-examine public safety policies related to vaccine requirements. Here is a brief review of the constitutional precedents and laws related to mandates at the federal and state levels.

In general, two key Supreme Court decisions speak to the authority of state and local officials to issue vaccine mandates. Generally, these decisions concluded that these governments may tell people to get vaccines, unless they belong to an exempt group, or face a penalty. In 1905, the Supreme Court ruled in Jacobson vs. Massachusetts that under a state law local health authorities could compel adults to receive the smallpox vaccine. Henning Jacobson refused a free smallpox vaccination that was mandated by the city of Cambridge; he was fined five dollars as a result. Jacobson argued the vaccination law violated his 14th Amendment due process rights.

Justice John Marshall Harlan, writing for court's majority, concluded that states under their general police powers had the ability to enact vaccine laws to protect citizens. Police powers allow a state to pass laws to protect the health, safety, and general welfare of the public. "It is for the legislature, and not for the courts, to determine in the first instance whether vaccination is or is not the best mode for the prevention of smallpox and the protection of the public health," Harlan wrote.

The second decision, Zucht v. King in 1922, arrived at a similar conclusion. San Antonio, Texas, excluded students from public and private schools who were not vaccinated for smallpox. This included the challenger in the case, Rosalyn Zucht. Her attorneys argued the vaccine policy violated Zucht's 14th Amendment due process rights. Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in the Court's decision that "long before this suit was instituted, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, had settled that it is within the police power of a state to provide for compulsory vaccination."

According to the Congressional Research Service's most-recent analysis, the general principles in Jacobson and Zucht form the basis for modern vaccine mandate policies, even though the Court's interpretations of the 14th Amendment have changed since 1922.

In a recent lawsuit, a federal court declined to grant an injunction against a public university's vaccine mandate. Eight Indiana University students had sued the school over a mandatory vaccine policy that blocked students from registering for class if they were not vaccinated. Under the university policy, students could apply for a medical or religious exemption if they agreed to wear masks and undergo Covid-19 testing. On August 2, 2021, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling in favor of the university, finding there was not enough evidence that the students' constitutional rights were being violated; the decision may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Another recent lawsuit filed by a law professor at George Mason University has challenged that school's vaccine mandate as well.

Related We The People Podcast: Are Vaccine Mandates Constitutional?

However, the broad powers held by states to control vaccine policy can also be used by state governments to block vaccine mandates, in certain situations, at lower government levels and in the private sector. As of August 2, at least 14 states had enacted Covid-19 related laws that barred employer vaccine mandates, school vaccine mandates, or vaccine passports.

At a federal level, the vaccine mandate question is more complicated. With few exceptions, the CRS says there are no laws that allow the federal government to issue a vaccine mandate to the general population. These exceptions include requiring proof of vaccination for immigrants requesting permanent resident status and vaccine mandates for military service members-allowing for certain exemptions. Recently, President Joe Biden ordered federal employees and contractors to attest to getting vaccinated or undergo weekly testing and other safety protocols.

According to the CRS, several federal vaccine mandate actions are theoretically possible. The Executive Branch could cite Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act (or PHSA), which allows the Department of Health and Human Services or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to make necessary measures "to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession."

Under the Constitution's Spending Clause, Congress could provide financial incentives for states to enact mandates. It could also regulate vaccine requirements related to interstate travel under the Commerce Clause. But any federal actions to enforce or incentivize vaccine mandates may face legal challenges based on the 10th Amendment's prohibition on commandeering or forcing states to use their own resources to carry out federal policies.

In addition, several federal laws allow for vaccine exemptions for employees based on religious beliefs (under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and disability status (under Title 1 of the Americans with Disabilities Act). The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission confirmed these exemptions in May 2021. "Federal EEO laws do not prevent an employer from requiring all employees physically entering the workplace to be vaccinated for COVID-19, so long as employers comply with the reasonable accommodation provisions of the ADA and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other EEO considerations," the commission said in a statement.

The allowance of vaccine exemptions based on religious beliefs, in particular, will remain an important question as the debate grows over vaccine mandates at the federal and state levels, as well as in the private sector. As of May 2021, 44 states and the District of Columbia had laws that allowed students to claim a religious exemption to immunizations, while 14 states allowed for philosophical exemptions.

In the Indiana University case, state attorney general Todd Rokita protested the school's initial policy, which required proof of vaccination. Rokita said the policy conflicted with a new state law that now bars vaccine passports in the state. The university then changed its rules to allow students to attest to their vaccine status online without presenting proof.

To be sure, there will be more controversy over vaccine policies, especially as they apply to schools and businesses as the Covid-19 situation remains unsettled.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.

Filed Under: 10th Amendment, 14th Amendment, Ninth Amendment

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Current constitutional issues related to vaccine mandates

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The Covid-19 delta variant's spread may force federal and state authorities to re-examine public safety policies related to vaccine requirements. Here is a brief review of the constitutional precedents and laws related to mandates at the federal and state levels.

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About the Film

An examination of the Supreme Court's dilemmas and tensions as it stepped into the "political thicket" of voting and representational equality, establishing the practice of what has become a core American principle: "One person, one vote."

View trailer.

It has the echo of a core American belief. It rings with the same distinctively American clarion call for equality and individual empowerment that reaches back through the ages to the nation's founding: "...of the people, by the people, for the people", "All men are created equal"...

But it wasn't until 1963 that "One person, one vote" became a widely articulated core principle of the Constitution when it was first spoken by Chief Justice Earl Warren's Supreme Court.

The Warren Court transformed the nation's political and social landscape in the middle of the twentieth century, applying the Constitution's expressions of fairness and equality to American life in sometimes startling, courageous, and even jarring ways. But no decisions were as important to the nation or as grueling to the members of the Court as those surrounding equality in voting and representation, known collectively as the Apportionment Cases.

Starting with the Court's 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr and culminating in 1964 with the case of Reynolds v. Sims, the value of "One person, one vote," once brought to light, seemed so profoundly rooted in the Constitution its practice became "inevitable."

Yet at the time these decisions were anything but "inevitable." It was a wrenching, agonizing time for the Justices. To establish equality in voting and representation, the Court had to overcome deeply rooted political traditions throughout the entire nation, entrenched political powers fiercely opposed to change, and its own precedent, Colegrove v. Green, that some members of the Court believed with every bone in their bodies protected the very practice of democracy in America - as well as the integrity and viability of the Court.

Through all of this, the Chief Justice understood the urgent necessity to press ahead. Of all of the groundbreaking rulings his Court rendered throughout his tenure as Chief Justice, he called the Court's choice to tackle this issue in Baker, its "most vital decision."

Image Gallery

Further Reading
Chief Justice Earl Warren The Warren Court, 1953-1969 Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter Associate Justice William Brennan Contact your Congressional Representative Learn More About Your State Government
Credits

Producer, Writer, and Narrator, Robe Imbriano
Associate Producer, Maria E. Matasar-Padilla
Editors, Brad Smith and Marc Tidalgo
Graphics Animators, Victoria Nece and Hiroaki Sasa
Camera, Edward Marritz
Production Associate, Gregory Blanc
Coordinating Producer, Christina Lowery
Sound, Mark Mandler
Music, Ben Decter and Gavin Allen
Senior Producer, Kayce Freed Jennings
Executive Producer, Tom Yellin

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An examination of the Supreme Court's dilemmas and tensions as it stepped into the "political thicket" of voting and representational equality, establishing the practice of what has become a core American principle: "One person, one vote." View trailer. It has the echo of a core American belief.