The court-mandated legislative district map for Washington that created a new Latino-majority voting district in Central Washington’s 14th District will stay intact under a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals filed Wednesday.
The three-judge panel stated that a group of conservative Latino voters, which included Jose Trevino, a Yakima County resident who ran for Congress in 2022 and state Rep. Alex Ybarra (R-Quincy) of the 13th Legislative District, did not demonstrate that the new map, adopted by the U.S. District Court in March 2024, violated the federal Equal Protection Clause.
Appellate Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote that the panel contends that the group did not prove a racial gerrymander, which would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The panel states the U.S. District Court drew a map based not on Latino voters’ race but their common interests, which include living in predominantly agricultural areas, having large Spanish-speaking populations and dealing with common issues such as insufficient access to affordable housing.
The fight over the maps began after the Washington State Redistricting Commission drew a map in 2021, putting a Latino majority in the 15th District. A group of Latino voters, including Susan Soto Palmer, a Democrat who has run for office in Yakima County several times, sued the state in 2022, saying that the way the commission drew the map divided Latino voters in the Yakima Valley, diluting their voting power. U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik sided with plaintiffs in his August 2023 ruling, stating that the state commission’s map violated federal voting rights laws and ordering a new map to be drawn.
The new map switched the Latino-voter-majority district from the 15th to the 14th, uniting Latino communities in Central Washington from the east part of Yakima to Pasco in neighboring Franklin County, including Latino communities along the Lower Yakima Valley.
The conservative Latino voters appealed both the redrawn map and Lasnik’s ruling in Palmer v. Hobbs. Along with this week’s ruling stating that the new map did not violate the Equal Protection Clause, the appeals court dismissed the conservative voters’ appeal on the original August 2023 decision, stating they did not have standing to do so.
Mai Hoang is the Central/Eastern Washington reporter for Cascade PBS, where she seeks to provide a broader perspective on what is happening east of the Cascades.
Mai Hoang is the Central/Eastern Washington reporter for Cascade PBS, where she seeks to provide a broader perspective on what is happening east of the Cascades.
