New Hawaii district maps challenged in court

The Hawaii Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the state Office of Elections to withhold issuing candidate nomination papers for the 2022 election while it considers a legal challenge to new redistricting maps for state legislative districts.

The Elections Office was supposed to open the candidate filing period Tuesday. Candidates have a deadline of June 7 to return their nomination papers.

The court order came in response to a petition filed Wednesday by 11 Hawaii voters alleging the new maps fail to adhere to constitutional requirements, in particular the one that says House districts must be wholly contained within Senate districts when practicable.

The high court instructed the state to respond to the challenge by Thursday.

Every 10 years, Hawaii is tasked with redrawing electoral district maps for state and congressional lawmakers based on new U.S. census data. In late January the state Reapportionment Commission in charge of redrawing the districts voted 8-1 to approve the new maps.

Any registered voter in the state can file a legal challenge to the redistricting within 40 days of the final maps being posted if they think they don’t meet the requirements of the state Constitution.

Bill Hicks, one of the 11 petitioners, said: “There’s no joy in taking this action. Sadly, it became necessary to stand up in this manner to ensure compliance with our Hawaii Constitution.

“The objective is to obtain better legislative districts, that is districts where House districts are fully contained within and aligned with Senate districts as directed by our Constitution. This will result in more effective representation and enhance the ability of neighborhoods to successfully advocate for issues of local concern.”

Hicks, who is also chairman of the Kailua Neighborhood Board, was active in the public-participation portion of the redistricting process. He even offered his own proposed maps, which gained wide community support despite not receiving an official hearing by the Reapportionment Commission.

Hicks said 35 out of the state’s 51 House districts are not contained within complementary Senate districts.

The petitioners’ court challenge asserts that it is possible to have more of the House districts contained within Senate districts while still complying with the other constitutional mandates.

Prior to the Supreme Court order issued Thursday afternoon, the Office of Elections said it would not comment on the pending litigation.

The primary election is Aug. 13, and the general election will be held Nov. 8.

Attorney Mateo Caballero, who represents the petitioners, explained that because Oahu’s filing requirements for candidates are relatively easy, those seeking office should be able to complete the paperwork by the June 7 filing deadline, even with a shorter filing period.

The situation is different from the last time reapportionment maps were successfully challenged in court in 2011.

That petition took about three months to resolve and was settled months before candidate filing began.

In the current case, the 2020 census data was delayed due to COVID-19 and attempts by former President Donald Trump to include a question about citizenship, which was struck down by the courts.

So instead of the population numbers being released last spring, the data wasn’t released until August. As a result of the delay, the Reappor- tionment Commission asked the state Supreme Court for an extension to file its final maps by the end of this month instead of July 2021.

“Our hope is that it’s a clear-cut answer and the court can act quickly,” Caballero said.

If the high court strikes down the current maps, the Reapportionment Commission will have to repeat the process.

However, Hicks is confident that could be completed quickly because there are already maps drawn up by community members that would comply with the constitutional requirements.

“It could be pretty quickly adopted; the road map is there,” he said.