E-Mail This Article to a Friend Back to the drawing board? Two lawsuits that question the legislative redistricting of 2001 may uncover the truth about the current state of race relations in Boston BY ADAM REILLY

WHEN TWO CIVIL lawsuits challenging the 2001 redrawing of Boston’s state House districts go to trial at the Moakley Federal Courthouse on November 10, most of the classic elements of legal drama will be missing. There won’t be a jury, or a murder weapon, or tearful testimony from grieving relatives. But Angel Meza et al. v. William Francis Galvin and Black Political Task Force et al. v. William Francis Galvin are still worth watching. Cut through the dense legal minutiae, and it’s clear that both cases are about race and power — reliably controversial subjects, especially in Boston. As the trials proceed, the plaintiffs will argue that Boston’s blacks and Latinos remain second-class citizens, and that an entrenched white political elite — led by House Speaker Thomas Finneran — used the redistricting process triggered by the 2000 Census to keep them marginalized. The defense will counter that the corridors of power are already open to political candidates of color and minority voters, and that the plaintiffs — instead of seeking a fair shake for voters and candidates of color — are actually looking for an easy shortcut to political success.

Coming at a time when Boston’s population is almost equally split between whites and people of color, the stakes in the two cases are high. A greater share of Boston’s residents are minorities — more than ever before — but the city’s number of "majority-minority" state House districts, in which people of color make up over 50 percent of the voting-age population, actually dropped after the last round of redistricting. When the redistricting that followed the 1990 Census was completed, Boston had 11 House districts in which whites were a majority of the voting-age population and six in which minority voters had a voting-age majority. Today, there are 12 "majority-white" and five "majority-minority" districts. If the defense can’t make its case, the panel of three US District Court judges slated to hear both cases could order the House back to the redistricting table, or even urge the legislature to implement an alternative plaintiffs’ plan that augments minority voting strength in several districts — including the 12th Suffolk, represented by Finneran. Either outcome could weaken the House Speaker’s hold on his seat, result in the creation of one or more new majority-minority districts, and provide black and Latino voters with unprecedented political opportunities. Verdicts for the defense, on the other hand, could exacerbate longstanding frustrations among Boston’s residents of color by bolstering the notion that the white power structure works to keep nonwhite Bostonians down. Whether this would lead to activism or apathy is anyone’s guess.

In other words, the stakes are high.

BOTH LAWSUITS HAD their genesis in 2001, when the legislature — as part of a process that follows each decennial census — undertook the redistricting of Massachusetts’s state and federal legislative districts. That the results of the process are now subject to two lawsuits isn’t a surprise. "After every round of redistricting, you’ll find that there are a number of lawsuits filed around the country," says Brenda Wright of the National Voting Rights Institute, which is assisting the Meza plaintiffs. "The issues can be very similar, in that there’s a minority group that has been excluded from the process or excluded from the kind of representation that it really should have." Wright adds that plaintiffs in voting-rights cases have recently prevailed in Colorado, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. "There have been any number of lawsuits over the past several decades, and they have in some instances really led to substantial increases in minority representation in state legislatures when they’ve been successful," she says. In 1989, for example, Jeffers v. Clinton resulted in the creation of several majority-African-American state-legislative districts in Arkansas.

Even taking the controversial nature of redistricting into account, however, the decisions made by Finneran as the process moved forward stand out as brash. For example, the Speaker proposed abolishing US Representative Martin Meehan’s Fifth Congressional District by moving the Fifth to Southern Massachusetts. This would have forced Meehan, who had publicly criticized Finneran’s refusal to fund the voter-approved Clean Elections Law, to run against fellow incumbent John Tierney to retain his spot in Congress. Finneran also floated a House redistricting plan that would have forced State Representatives Ruth Balser and Kay Khan, both Newton Democrats and Finneran opponents, to run against each other. In the end, neither proposal was implemented, and Meehan, Balser, and Khan retained their seats. But Finneran’s detractors saw the Speaker’s threats as proof of his willingness to employ redistricting as a political weapon.

In addition, organizations representing Boston’s African-American and Latino communities quickly became frustrated when they were shut out of the House redistricting process. Atiya Dangleben, program coordinator at the advocacy group Boston VOTE, says the Senate committee on redistricting responded positively to community input. But things were different in the House. "We got absolutely no response after repeated attempts to reach Representative [Thomas] Petrolati, the House redistricting chairman, or Speaker Finneran," Dangleben says. "We were denied any kind of access." Guillermo Quinteros, who was then director of Chelsea’s Commission on Hispanic Affairs, had a similar experience with the legislature’s joint committee on redistricting, which was also co-chaired by Petrolati, a Ludlow Democrat. "We sent a proposal suggesting a couple solutions" for the Second Suffolk House District [which is the focus of the Meza suit], Quinteros recalls. "At that time we were not thinking about a lawsuit — we wanted to be part of the process. We never got anything, not even an acknowledgement of our proposals and letters." (Chelsea’s Commission on Hispanic Affairs is a plaintiff in Meza; Boston VOTE and the affiliated organization Mass VOTE are plaintiffs in both Meza and BPTF.)

At present, it’s impossible to say whether proposals from Chelsea’s Commission on Hispanic Affairs or other organizations advocating for Boston’s communities of color received any consideration. Petrolati, citing "legislative privilege," has refused to provide information on the deliberations behind the final redistricting plan, which was released in October 2001. Finneran — who enlisted attorney Larry DiCara, a former Boston city councilor and an old friend of the Speaker’s, to assist with the redistricting process — has done the same. More information could emerge if, as expected, Finneran and Petrolati testify at the trials. But depositions taken earlier this year paint an improbable picture of Petrolati’s and Finneran’s level of involvement. Petrolati, for example, said that he took no notes at the five public hearings held on redistricting, and couldn’t recall reading notes taken by his staff — a strange admission coming from the legislator ostensibly in charge of the process. Petrolati also stated he didn’t know the geographical relationship between Charlestown and Chelsea — the communities at the center of the Meza lawsuit — and couldn’t say if Suffolk County had large Latino or African-American populations. Certain comments made by Finneran are even harder to buy. For example, the man whose mastery of the House earned him the honorific (or epithet) "King Tom" said, under oath, that he didn’t know the racial or ethnic composition of his district following the 2001 redistricting. Finneran also said he didn’t know which neighborhoods were removed from his district through redistricting, or which precincts were added.

THE LAWSUITS ARE built on a foundation consisting of the 2000 US Census results, the 14th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act, commonly accepted redistricting principles, and the dramatically changed racial make-up of four House districts. First, the 2000 US Census showed that the racial and ethnic landscape of Boston changed dramatically between 1990 and 2000. According to the census, groups traditionally labeled "minority," which accounted for just over 40 percent of Boston’s residents in 1990, made up just over half of the city’s population 10 years later. Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and other minorities also represented approximately 44 percent of the city’s voting-age population in 2000. Because substantial portions of Boston’s minority population lack citizenship, however, the minority share of the city’s population of eligible voting-age residents was lower; exactly how much lower remains unclear.

Second, the 14th Amendment mandates that one person gets one vote. Therefore, districts of the same type need to contain roughly the same number of voters. Third, the Voting Rights Act, a piece of civil-rights-era legislation passed in 1965, says electoral boundaries need to provide nonwhite voters equal political opportunity and the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice — but what these terms mean depends on whom you ask. Fourth, custom and legal precedent hold that cohesive communities like cities, neighborhoods, and ethnic enclaves are supposed to be kept intact when possible: for example, you wouldn’t expect Irish Catholic South Boston to be divided among multiple House districts. Legal precedent also says it’s okay for incumbents to use redistricting to strengthen their political position. And everyone admits that redistricting is used to shore up support for the dominant political party.

Finally, there are the results of the 2001 House redistricting. As part of the comprehensive redistricting process triggered by the 2000 Census, a joint legislative committee — acting on recommendations from DiCara and the House redistricting committee — revamped the lines of Boston’s 17 state House districts. When the legislature accepted the joint committee’s plan, some of the redrawn districts were noticeably whiter than they had been before. For example, Finneran’s 12th Suffolk District—in which a majority of eligible voters had been African-American — shed heavily black portions of Mattapan and acquired largely white areas of Milton and Dorchester, shifting the district’s power base from black Mattapan to white Dorchester in the process. In the reconfigured 12th Suffolk, blacks now make up less than 50 percent of eligible voters, according to the most recent census data. In the Jamaica Plain–based 11th Suffolk District — currently represented by Elizabeth Malia, who is white — parts of Roslindale were added and sections of Dorchester were shifted out; white residents now represent a majority of the district’s voting-age residents. Similarly, the 15th Suffolk — based in Jamaica Plain and Mission Hill and represented at the time of redistricting by Finneran ally Kevin Fitzgerald — gained portions of Brookline and lost sections of Jamaica Plain and Roxbury, with the minority voting-age population dropping from 54 to 41 percent in the process. A radically different change took place in the Dorchester-based Sixth Suffolk District, represented then and now by Shirley Owens-Hicks, an African-American. The Sixth shed largely white sections of Hyde Park and Milton and added portions of Mattapan that had been dropped from the 12th Suffolk, Finneran’s seat. In the old Sixth Suffolk, the voting-age population was 77 percent black and Latino and 82 percent minority; in the redrawn district, the black and Latino voting-age population increased to 92 percent and the minority voting-age population hit 98 percent.

Each of these districts figures prominently in the BPTF lawsuit, which targets the "packing" of minority voters into the Sixth Suffolk and the dilution of minority voting strength elsewhere. In Meza, meanwhile, the dispute hinges on the Charlestown-based Second Suffolk, currently represented by Eugene O’Flaherty of Chelsea — who, as his name suggests, is not Latino. The new Second Suffolk is much the same as it was before redistricting, with largely white Charlestown joined with several heavily Latino precincts from Chelsea. About a third of the Second Suffolk’s voting-age residents are now Latino, according to the most recent census data. The Meza plaintiffs contend that this represents a missed opportunity to maximize Latino voting strength, and propose creating a new Second Suffolk that links Chelsea and East Boston, both of which have large Latino populations.

To anyone unfamiliar with voting-rights law, the presence of hard facts like district boundaries and census data suggests a situation of complete clarity. But redistricting’s multiple priorities and competing goals make the picture murkier. For example, it would seem that the redistricting of Finneran’s district — which exchanged portions of largely black Mattapan for portions of largely white Milton — has violated the "cohesive community" guideline. At the same time, however, it would seem that the redistricting process was used to strengthen the incumbent Finneran’s position, which legal precedent allows.

So it’s no surprise the two sides in Meza and BPTF have drawn starkly different conclusions from the same raw material. Take the case of Camacho et al. v. Finneran, which focuses on the continued merging of a portion of Chelsea with Charlestown. According to the defense, Jarrett Barrios’s election to the state Senate in 2002 shows Charlestown’s white voters are commendably enlightened: instead of refusing to vote for a candidate who didn’t look like them, they gave Barrios (who is Latino) almost 40 percent support. The Meza plaintiffs arrive at a grimmer conclusion — that Barrios, despite being a state rep with good name recognition and a well-run campaign, couldn’t even garner a majority in Charlestown. The distinction is more than academic. For the Meza and BPTF plaintiffs to prove a Voting Rights Act violation, one of the things they need to show is that — in the various districts being challenged — whites usually prevent minority candidates from winning by voting as a cohesive bloc.

Asked about this disagreement, Barrios — who notes he is uninvolved in Meza, is unfamiliar with the specifics of the case, and has not spoken with attorneys on either side — observes that "the only community my ethnicity became an issue in was Charlestown." He adds that some Charlestown voters accused him of wanting to grant illegal immigrants full voting rights, possibly misinterpreting his support for a Cambridge home-rule petition allowing green-card holders to vote in Cambridge school-committee elections. In any event, Barrios says, "what I was accused of when I was going door to door, by some residents of Charlestown, was of support of illegals. ‘You people’ was how it was referred to.... Lots of Charlestown residents voiced support for my campaign, but they too encountered this attitude from a number of other Charlestown residents. I didn’t experience that in any other community."