A panel of federal judges on Wednesday upheld the Kansas Legislature’s plan that splits Lawrence between two congressional districts.

“This court cannot now replace the Legislature’s judgments with its own,” the three-judge panel said in an unsigned ruling.

	The full decision

The panel was headed by Lawrence’s Deanell Tacha, chief judge of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Lawrence resident Timothy Graham, a 28-year-old staff member of Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, was disappointed by the ruling. He was one of the plaintiffs in the case.

“You know, in big cities, you have to do this, it’s understandable,” Graham said. “But in little Kansas, it doesn’t have to be that way. The lines can, and should, be drawn in ways that keep ‘communities of interest’ together.”

Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh said Wednesday’s decision meant primary elections would be staged as originally scheduled on Aug. 6.

The filing deadline for congressional candidates is Tuesday.

“The court’s quick ruling will ensure an orderly and accurate election process,” said Thornburgh, who earlier had said any judicial strikes against the plan could have delayed the election.

Thornburgh said he doubted an appeal would be successful.

“It’s a rather clear and decisive ruling,” he said.

The decision apparently caps more than a year of wrangling over redistricting.

East-west city split

Lawrence officials were among the most vocal during the redistricting process in trying to keep the city in the 3rd District with the Kansas City area, claiming economic and education links to the metro area.

Democrats devised a plan that kept Lawrence with the major population centers in Johnson and Wyandotte counties, but Republicans rejected the proposal because it would split off parts of GOP-rich southern Johnson County.

Lawrence officials said if they couldn’t stay in the 3rd, they hoped to keep the city intact in the 2nd District, saying it would be simpler dealing with one congressman instead of two. They got neither wish.

Instead, the plan places most of western Lawrence in the 2nd District represented by conservative Republican Rep. Jim Ryun while keeping eastern Lawrence in the 3rd District represented by Democratic Rep. Dennis Moore. The plan also places Junction City in the 1st District and keeps neighboring Fort Riley in the 2nd District.

Under the plan upheld by the court, the greatest difference in population between any two districts is 33 residents out of an ideal population of 672,105 for each district.

Communities of interest

Atty. Gen. Carla Stovall brought the suit in June on behalf of Junction City residents. Graham later joined the suit.

They argued that communities of interest shouldn’t be divided. Keeping such communities together was a stated criteria of the Kansas Legislature during redistricting.

“The fact that this is a legitimate goal does not mean that there is an individual constitutional right to have one’s particular community of interest contained within one congressional district,” the court said in its ruling.

Democrats long complained that Republicans wanted to split Lawrence to cut into the base of Moore, the only Democrat in the Kansas congressional delegation. But Republicans said that wasn’t true, contending Lawrence needed to be divided because of the 3rd District’s phenomenal growth.

The court said: “Graham and the Junction City intervenors have presented no evidence of bad faith by the Legislature, which might have affected our evaluation” of the redistrict map.

Call for change

Graham said Wednesday, however, that the redistricting process was far too political.

“I think it’s clear that Kansas needs to revisit the redistricting process in a way that takes the politics out of it,” he said. “Until we do, there’s only so much anybody can do.”

Rep. Troy Findley, D-Lawrence, is the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Reapportionment. He agreed with Graham.

“We have a flawed process,” he said. “And it’s my position that we ought to take a long, hard look at reform. My preference would be to go to some sort of independent commission. We need to take the politics out of it.”

Appeal an uphill battle

Robert Eye of Lawrence, the attorney representing Democrats who opposed splitting Lawrence, said he and his clients would decide next week whether to appeal to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

“We’re going to check our signals and decide how to proceed,” Eye said.

But he conceded an appeal would be an uphill climb.

“The way the process works, the maps that come out of the Legislature and approved by the governor carry with it almost a presumption of legitimacy,” he said. “We recognized it was a long shot, but we couldn’t give up without a fight.”

Assistant Atty. Gen. Scott Hesse said he doubted the office would appeal. “It’s not my decision, but I don’t anticipate one,” he said. “We have an election to carry out.”

At least one local official wasn’t disappointed by the decision Wednesday.

“We will have the opportunity to have two quality legislators represent our community,” City Commissioner Jim Henry said. “They will agree more than they will disagree.”

Journal-World staff writers Dave Ranney and Scott Rothchild contributed to this report.