Heavy snow and difficult travel expected again, heaviest snow in southern Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Legal wrangling has begun over new Minnesota congressional and legislative district boundaries stemming from the 2020 census with the filing of a new lawsuit.

Every 10 years the political maps are redrawn to account for population shifts, with a goal of making each type of district roughly equal in size.

Since the 1970s in Minnesota, it’s a process that has spilled into the courts and resulted in judges dictating the layout.

 in Carver County and a parallel action in the Minnesota Supreme Court will pull in the judicial branch again. The cases name election officials as the defendants and seeks to prevent the current maps from being used in 2022.

That’s a concern because census figures 

 and Minnesota’s Legislature has divided party control. Minnesota could also lose a congressional seat this round.

Plaintiffs cite state demographer estimates that about half of Minnesota’s counties are believed to have shed population since 2010, with the shrinking counties predominantly or entirely in greater Minnesota. That means those areas have the most to lose as the district boundaries are readjusted. 

The case brought by retired legislative redistricting expert Peter Wattson and others says judges should insist on new maps. And it says the courts should draw them if nothing clears the Legislature by this time next year.

Politics and Government News

NewsPartners

Brian Bakst

Author

For the past five decades, judges have played a key role in deciding what the state’s political maps look like. And a lawsuit has already been filed in the next round of redistricting. 

Political mapmaking heads to familiar spot: Minnesota’s courts

Go Deeper.

Like this?