Court Briefs                                                              

U.S. ruling could affect
Chicago congressional districts

A late June decision by the U.S. Supreme Court puts a new focus on four Chicago-area congressional districts where boundaries were drawn to bolster minority voting.

The court's 5-4 ruling in Miller v. Johnson struck down a Georgia congressional redistricting plan under which three black Democrats won seats in that state's 11-member delegation.

The justices held that districts cannot be drawn using race as the "predominant factor." The court also revived a legal challenge to a North Carolina redistricting plan that created two majority-black districts and agreed to use a Texas case to study the tactics state legislatures use in designing election districts to benefit racial minorities.

The four Chicago U.S. House districts drawn to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 include Luis V. Gutierrez's predominantly Hispanic 4th District and three black-majority districts: Bobby L. Rush's 1st District, Mel Reynolds' 2nd District and Cardiss Collins' 7th District, All four representatives are Democrats.

Of particular concern to some Illinois observers is the 4th, a C-shaped district drawn to link the city's Mexican-American and Puerto Rican communities.

"We don't know what the ripple effect will be," says U.S. Rep. Richard J. Durbin of Springfield. "I sat next to the computer to help draw a district that would make it possible for Hispanics to have a representative. I hope that district would stand."

William L. Kelly and James R. King have filed a federal lawsuit challenging Gutierrez's and Rush's districts. Kelly was Rush's Republican opponent in 1994. King lives in Gutierrez's district. Twiley Barker, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is not surprised by the lawsuits. "I think you'll find suits filed in any district where a black or Latino is elected," he says.

The Supreme Court ruling makes it harder for states to take voters' race into account when drawing election districts to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The 1st District, on the city's South Side, elected Oscar de Priest in 1928 — the first black congressman in the country to be elected during this century — and has been electing African Americans to Congress ever since. However, minority representation has increased over the past 30 years since the Act's passage. Besides Chicago's four minority-majority congressional districts, minority representation has increased in the state legislature and other bodies. In 1995, for the first time, the majority of Chicago's city council members are minorities.

Nonetheless, political scientist Paul Green believes the impact of the decision on Chicago districts will be minimal. Green directs the Institute for Public Policy at Governors State University in University Park. "You would have to do far more than tinker with the boundaries" to remove the three African-American representatives, he says. And "Gutierrez's political alliances are strong enough to withstand any boundary changes."

Barker agrees with Green. "I don't think there will be difficulty drawing lines to meet the U.S. Supreme Court's tougher scrutiny standards," he says. "The bottom line is, the legislature will be capable of drawing lines to meet these standards."

State's attorneys can't unionize

Assistant state's attorneys are managers because of the duties assigned to them by law, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in Office of the Cook County State's Attorney v. the Illinois Local Labor Relations Board, et al.

In the June ruling, the justices rejected an attempt by Cook County prosecutors to organize their own union for dealings with State's Attorney Jack O'Malley.

"It's a very bad decision," says Steve Trossman, director of communications for Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which had sought to participate in an election to represent the prosecutors. "It strips away the rights of a whole group of employees to organize." Trossman also says that defining assistant state's attorneys strictly as managers is inappropriate because their duties vary from one area of the state to another.

Trossman says AFSCME represents assistant state's attorneys in Will and Peoria counties, as well as public defenders and state appellate prosecutors and appellate defenders around the state. He says that state's attorneys in those counties have made no effort to oppose unionizing by their assistants. "I don't think the ruling brings organizing to a halt, but it does make it more difficult," he says. "If state's attorneys oppose it, they can stop it."

The Cook County prosecutors had attempted to organize under the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act. The high court ruled that the statutes defining the duties of state's attorneys and their assistants show a sufficient identity of interest with delegation of authority to the assistants to give assistants managerial status. Managers cannot bargain collectively under the Act. Justice Benjamin K. Miller's opinion cited a 1915 decision that implies managerial status of assistant state's attorneys. This ruling does not necessarily apply to all publicly employed attorneys.

In dissent, Justice Moses W. Harrison II, joined by Justice Charles E. Freeman, said the Act permits bargaining only over wages, hours and conditions of employment. He argued that employees who have no supervisory control over these things are not managers.