Kansas Legislature hires attorneys with GOP ties for assistance in redistricting fight
A Kansas City law firm with close connections to Republican politics will represent the Kansas Legislature in state court challenges to the newly drawn congressional map.
A panel of Legislative leadership voted Wednesday to hire Graves Garrett to represent them in the event that they become a party to or seek intervene in two suits filed last week in Wyandotte County District Court.
The firm has represented the Kansas Legislature in suits challenging gubernatorial executive orders. It has also worked for the National Republican Redistricting Trust, a group that helps to coordinate national redistricting strategy for the party. Its senior partners are Todd Graves, a former U.S. Attorney in Missouri and brother of Rep. Sam Graves, and Nathan Garrett, a former member of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners.
Any fees to the firm will be paid out of the Legislature’s budget. Republican leaders said it is necessary for the Legislature to have its own representation to defend their power to draw maps.
“It’s important out of nothing more than an abundance of caution,” Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican said. “I’d rather air on the side of being over-prepared rather than under-prepared.”
Last week, state-level voting rights groups and national organizations sued the Kansas Secretary of State seeking to block enforcement of a new congressional redistricting map that would favor GOP candidates by splitting Wyandotte County along Interstate 70 and moving Lawrence into the rural first congressional district.
The suits allege that the map constitutes a racial and partisan gerrymander that deprives Kansans of rights guaranteed in the state constitution. They ask the court to throw out the map, give the Legislature a deadline to enact a new one and, if it fails to do so, re-draw the lines themselves.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt is representing Kansas in the lawsuits and filed a brief last week seeking to have them dismissed.
The decision to sue in state court is unusual. While litigation over congressional maps is common, past challenges in Kansas have played out in federal court.
Redistricting experts told The Star that map opponents would face an uphill climb in federal court because the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 stopped the federal judiciary from reviewing districts for partisan gerrymandering. The court last week also signaled it may weaken protections against racial gerrymandering by allowing an Alabama map to go into effect despite a lower court decision that it must be redrawn to increase Black voting strength.
The state lawsuits will begin in Wyandotte County District Court, where judges are elected, and could reach the Kansas Supreme Court. A majority of justices on the high court were appointed by Democratic governors.
Speaker Pro Tempore Blaine Finch, an Ottawa Republican, said the state route was a key reason the Legislature needed its own representation. If the state-level suits succeed, he said, it would erode the Legislature’s constitutional power to draw maps.
“If we create new state causes of action about redistricting we end up eroding the Legislature’s ability to make those decisions,” Finch said. “It becomes subject to a whole new body of law that’s never been a cause of action in the state of Kansas before.”
The Star’s Jonathan Shorman contributed to this story.
This story was originally published February 23, 2022 at 2:13 PM.
