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MONDAY, APRIL 08- APRIL 14, 2024
VISIT CORONANEWSPRESS.COM
VOL. 8,
NO. 166
As elections loom, congressional maps challenged as discriminatory will remain in place
Flag ceremony highlights fight against child abuse
By Marilyn W. Thompson, ProPublica
By Staff
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
W
ith the Republicans holding just a two-vote majority in the House of Representatives, voters will go to the polls in November in at least two congressional districts that have been challenged as discriminatory against people of color. After months of delays and appeals, courts have decided in the last two weeks that the maps in South Carolina and Florida will stand, giving Republican incumbents an advantage. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take action on South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. In January 2023, a three-judge federal panel had declared it an illegal racial gerrymander that must be redrawn before another election was held. In Florida, the congressional map has faced long-running discrimination lawsuits in both state and federal courts, with one state judge ruling that a district near Jacksonville disadvantaged voters of color. A higher court overturned that judgment, but an appeal from voting rights and civil rights groups is still pending before the state Supreme Court, which has said it could be months before it rules. A decision about another contested district in Utah is pending with the state Supreme Court and seems unlikely to be resolved before the elections, according to Mark Gaber of the Campaign Legal Center, who represents plaintiffs in a partisan gerrymandering lawsuit. Put in place in 2021 after the last federal census, the controversial maps were used in multiple elections
Community members and county leaders gather for the flag-raising. | Photo courtesy of Riverside County
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o further educate the public on how to identify signs of abuse and neglect, the Riverside County Family Service Association and the HOPE Collaborative hosted the second annual Child Abuse Prevention flagraising ceremony Wednesday. The event also was intended to honor children impacted by violence, abuse and neglect while highlighting collaborative efforts by community members and government officials to protect the children. “The Riverside County Board of Supervisors remains committed to safeguarding our most vulnerable children,” 2nd District Supervisor Karen Spiegel said in a statement. “We stand united to ensure a comprehensive system of
| Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
during the 2022 election cycle. “The long, extended delays are a real problem, for voting rights and particularly for Black voters,” Gaber said. The cases illustrate how difficult it is to reverse gerrymandered voting maps. Even when lower courts find election maps illegal and give state legislatures months to make corrections, appeals and other delaying tactics can run out the clock as elections near. Federal courts have been reluctant to make mapping changes too close to elections because of a vague legal idea known as the Purcell principle, based on a 2006 court case from Arizona that found that voters may be confused by late changes in polling places or election procedures. The U.S. Supreme Court cited Purcell in 2022 when it left an illegal congressional
map in place in Alabama for midterm elections while it considered a Republican appeal. Black voters cast their ballots under a discriminatory map, and when the Supreme Court finally decided the case in 2023, it reaffirmed that Alabama’s map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and must be redrawn. A new map is now in place for 2024, which could result in the election of a second Democratic representative for the state in November. The Supreme Court made a similar call in 2022 in a Louisiana redistricting case after a federal court struck down the state’s congressional map. Voters cast ballots in 2022 under the challenged map. Since then, the state Legislature
has redrawn the map and created a second majorityBlack district that could help Democrats gain another seat in Congress. The exact cutoff for applying the Purcell principle has not been defined, but conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has cited it in his opinions, has said the principle reflects a “bedrock tenet of election law.” The delayed rulings and actions in Alabama and Louisiana and a ruling this week in Washington state have favored Democrats. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court declined to stop a new state legislative map from going into effect in Washington, where a lower court had found discrimination against Latinos in the Yakima Valley. Republicans
See Congressional maps Page 23
See Flag ceremony Page 24
Man charged with fatally shooting senior, trying to kill girlfriend By City News Service
A
man who allegedly gunned down his 75-year-old housemate and tried to kill his girlfriend during a dispute at their south Riverside residence was charged Thursday with murder and other offenses. Christopher Jacob Lennox, 27, of Riverside, was arrested March 31 following a Riverside Police Department investigation. Along with murder, Lennox is charged with attempted murder, domestic violence and sentence-enhancing gun and great bodily injury allegations. The defendant, who was being held on $1 million bail at the Robert Presley Jail, was slated to make his initial court appearance Thursday afternoon at the Riverside Hall of Justice. He allegedly killed Robert Joe Mageno of Riverside around noon on Easter Sunday in the 7600 block of Canberra See Shooting Page 24