U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik adopted a new Washington legislative map as of mid-March, ending a process started in 2020. The task fell to Lasnik after Washington’s Secretary of State Steven Hobbs was sued in 2022 when the state’s Redistricting Committee produced a preliminary map that left much to be desired.
The claim was that the original map systematically functioned to dilute the voting power of Indigenous and Latinx communities in Central Washington. The original plan bisected this community in South Central Washington, denying this voting block an opportunity to elect candidates who reflect their community’s interests. In response, the Campaign Legal Center, the UCLA Voting Rights Project, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund challenged the map’s implementation, saying it violated the Voting Rights Act.
Struggles related to Latinx voting rights, specifically in Central Washington, have made headlines in recent years. In 2014, we saw Montes v. Yakima challenge the City of Yakima’s election system, claiming that it had served as a structural impediment to the election of Latinx candidates who came from a demographic that made up roughly 45% of the city’s population at the time.
The ruling led to the first time Latinx candidates had ever been elected to the Yakima City Council. Additionally, it served as a bellwether: Wenatchee, with a 32% Latinx population as of 2020, and Pasco, with a 56% Latinx population as of 2020, followed suit by also electing Latinx candidates to their councils.
Voting accessibility issues are a widely known part of American history, but historian and Central Washington University Professor Josue Estrada argues a longer history of voter suppression is also interwoven with language access issues. One example can be seen in the 1968 case Mexican American Federation v. Naff (then Yakima County Auditor), which argued that a provision in Washington’s constitution required voters to be able to speak and read the English language and was in violation of constitutional rights. In his 2021 Ph.D. dissertation, Estrada noted that it wasn’t until amendments to the Voting Rights Act were made in 1975 that we saw the inclusion of “language minority” communities, bolstering efforts to challenge voter suppression in the Courts.
It is hard to foresee what these decisions mean for many community members. I must also admit I currently feel jaded by national electoral politics. Yet the impact cannot be understated. We have seen how “majority-minority” allows people of color an opportunity to chart their own course — an effort that only came about after years of social action, community mobilization and fearless efforts to contest the established order.
While there is still much more to do, this is a start.
Oscar Rosales grew up in the Yakima Valley and works and resides in Seattle.
Read more of the March 27–April 2, 2024 issue.