A coalition of Oahu and Big Island residents has formed a nonprofit corporation and hired an attorney to challenge the new legislative district maps created by the state Reapportionment Commission.
The Reapportionment Justice Coalition has hired attorney Mateo Caballero, former legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, to present the case before the state Supreme Court.
The coalition was registered Thursday with the state, using a Waikoloa Village address. The corporation is chaired by Kailua, Oahu, resident Bill Hicks, with Puna resident Ralph Boyea as vice president and Waikoloa resident Kathleen Huckabay as treasurer.
Registered agent and secretary, Robert Fox, of Manoa, said Monday he was in the process of setting up a GoFundMe page and the nonprofit had already started accepting donations.
Fox said he got involved because of his deep-seated respect for the constitution and his views on the importance of following its tenets and protecting people’s rights.
He said he was bothered by the way the Oahu map splits Manoa Valley, but also by the way the map splits the island’s most populous Native Hawaiian districts.
“It’s so onerous on the surface of it, at one point or another people have to say no,” Fox said. “When Manoa got divided it’s like throwing a hose at a hornet’s nest. … The Big Island was chopped up like carrot cake.”
At issue for the coalition are the House maps for Oahu and Hawaii Island that were changed after one of the House districts moved from Oahu to Hawaii Island to reflect population changes. The map proposed by the commission adds the eighth district in North Kohala, including Hawi, Waimea and Waikoloa, while keeping House District 1 as the Hamakua district.
The coalition has no beef with the House seat moving but the way the maps were withdrawn, Fox said.
A different group of Big Island residents were successful in 2011 appeal to the Supreme Court that ended with changes to how nonresident military and students are counted, leading to a fourth Senate seat for the Big Island that year.
Residents of Puna and Waikoloa Village disliked the latest map, but for different reasons. Puna residents who testified said the new district should go to their fast-growing East Hawaii region rather than to West Hawaii. Waikoloa residents didn’t like their community split.
“We are in two House districts; two Senate districts. … There’s so much going on and we’d have to go to four separate people for representation,” Huckabay said. “We’re on the cusp of a tremendous amount of growth.”
Hicks and Boyea presented the commission with alternative maps that they said hit more of the standards set in the state constitution: all the House districts were nestled within single Senate districts, communities of interest weren’t unnecessarily split, population counts in each district were closer to the ideal and no minority districts were diluted or subsumed by being added to other districts.
Despite public testimony almost unanimously in support of the community maps, the commission stuck to its guns, voting 8-1 to forward the commission-drawn maps to the state Office of Elections for use in contests over the next decade.
Boyea declined comment Monday, saying he might become a plaintiff in the case. Hicks didn’t return a phone message by press time.
Commissioners at the last meeting said they were confident the maps pass constitutional muster because the state constitution sets forth guidelines, not inflexible standards.
Commissioner Dylan Nonaka, the Hawaii Island member who chaired the Technical Committee that drew the maps, on Monday declined comment, saying he’d leave that to the state Attorney General’s Office if there’s a lawsuit.