ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday that a map of state Senate districts in Anchorage “constituted an unconstitutional political gerrymander violating equal protection under the Alaska Constitution.”
In a combined summary decision, the court said it is sending the issue back to a lower court that previously instructed the state’s five-person redistricting board to redraw the Senate map or explain why it is impossible to do so.
Alaska’s Senate districts are each made of two House districts. In November, members of the redistricting board linked each of Eagle River’s House districts with districts elsewhere in Anchorage. This resulted in two Republican-leaning Senate seats and accusations of political gerrymandering by the three Republican-appointed members of the redistricting board.
Some East Anchorage residents sued, challenging the decision and asking for new pairings. The result could be a strongly Republican Eagle River Senate seat and a tossup seat in East Anchorage, but there could also be ripple effects in the Senate districts elsewhere in Anchorage.
The high-court decision upheld all but one part of the redistricting board’s map of House districts. That lone exception is the “Cantwell appendage,” a peninsula-like arm that places the Interior community of Cantwell into a vast rural House district instead of the Parks Highway district that surrounds it. The court instructed that the peninsula be erased and Cantwell be placed with its neighbors.
The justices overturned a lower-court ruling that found flaws with the boundaries of the state House districts covering Juneau and northern Southeast Alaska.
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