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Thursday, August 12, 2004
Indiana Decisions - Is the election of county commissioners in Washington County, Indiana illegal?
Is the election of county commissioners in Washington County, Indiana illegal? That was the question posed in a federal suit filed in May by a resident of Salem, Indiana (located in Washington County). Access the May 9th Indiana Law Blog entry here. According to an Indianapolis Star story published at the time: "Mead cites an Indiana law that required all counties to perform redistricting in 2001. The suit claims that Washington County has not done so and that the populations of its districts are not equal. The commissioners said redistricting is not required for Washington County."
The answer, according to a ruling by federal district court Judge David F. Hamilton, Angela Mead v. Washington County Commissioners, issued 8/2/04, is that the election is valid:
Plaintiff Angela Mead is a voter in Washington County, Indiana. She alleges that the defendants, the County Commissioners of Washington County, Indiana, have violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as Indiana law, by failing to adopt proper election districts for the commissioners themselves and for the county council. Mead alleges that Washington County’s three county commissioner districts have a total deviation of 90.93 percent between the most and least populated districts. She alleges that Washington County’s four single-member county council districts were also unequal with a total deviation of 50.30 percent. According to Mead, both sets of districts violate the “one person, one vote” principle outlined in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964). She seeks to have both the county commissioner and county council districts declared unconstitutional and redrawn. She also alleges that the county commissioners failed to comply with state laws requiring periodic redistricting and districts of nearly equal populations. * * *[Mead] alleges only that the district lines have not been redrawn at all and that the districts have unequal populations. However, this practice does not violate the one person, one vote principle under the Equal Protection Clause.
This court has supplemental jurisdiction over Mead’s state law challenge to the county commissioner districts. Her challenge is based on a simple misreading of the applicable statute. The requirement in Indiana Code § 36-2-2-4(d) that county commissioner districts “contain, as nearly as is possible, equal population,” applies only to counties with populations of more than 200,000 and less than 300,000 or of more than 400,000 and less than 700,000. Because the state law claim is clearly without merit, the court can spare state courts the trouble of deciding the question by exercising supplemental jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1367, and dismissing the claim. See Van Harken v. Chicago, 103 F.3d 1346, 1354 (7th Cir. 1997).
Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 12, 2004 08:52 PM
Posted to Indiana Decisions