By NANCY COOK LAUER
Stephens Media
The Oahu group that’s fighting the new legislative maps has asked a federal judge to halt the upcoming election until new districts can be drawn.
“A preliminary injunction may be extraordinary relief, but here it is necessary to remedy an extraordinary wrong,” states the motion for injunction, filed Monday by Honolulu attorney Robert Thomas, on behalf of an Oahu state representative and five other plaintiffs.
The motion for preliminary injunction is scheduled to be heard at 10 a.m. May 18 by Judge J. Michael Seabright.
The lawsuit could throw the entire election into chaos. Candidates have already started filing nomination papers for the Aug. 11 primary based on the district maps. The filing deadline is June 5.
The six plaintiffs, including three veterans and state Rep. K. Mark Takai, contend the state Reapportionment Commission violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution when it extracted nonresident military and students from counts that determined district lines.
The maps had been redrawn to extract the nonresidents after the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Big Island group who said including the military and students violated the state constitution.
At issue is a fourth state Senate seat for the Big Island, which it won by forcing the issue at the Supreme Court. Big Island Democratic Party members and other challengers pointed to the Big Island’s 24.5 percent population growth, the highest in the state, as a reason to increase representation here.
If the Oahu group prevails at the federal level, the island could again lose the seat to the more populous island.
The state Office of the Attorney General, the defendants in the lawsuit, did not return a telephone message by press time.
But in a stipulation of facts filed April 20, the state agreed that all military and students who as “usual residents” were counted by the U.S. Census as living in Hawaii should be included in the counts determining where district lines are drawn.
However, in the case of military and students who are counted by the U.S. Census as residents of other states, those were removed to the best of the Reapportionment Commission’s ability.
The commission extracted 42,332 active duty military who listed another state as their usual residence, along with 53,115 military dependents. In addition, the commission extracted 13,320 students who paid nonresident tuition or had a home address outside Hawaii, the stipulation states.
Email Nancy Cook Lauer at ncook-lauer@westhawaiitoday.com.
