Cranston Wins Appeal in Prison Gerrymandering Case

CRANSTON, RI—In a sudden reversal, an appeals court on Wednesday struck down a district court ruling that Cranston's 2014 redistricting was illegal because it counted all inmates at the state prison as residents of a single voting ward.

Judge Jeffrey R. Howard, chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Circuit Judges Sandra L. Lynch and William J. Kayatta Jr., ruled that the district court's decision be reversed and a summary judgement be entered in favor of the city.

The lawsuit was filed by the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a group of residents.

The ACLU contended that the redistricting plan gave Ward Six residents inflated voting power by counting the thousands of inmates at the prison as residents of that ward, violating the "one vote, one person" principal. It diluted the voting power of residents in the city's other five wards, the lawsuit alleged, and the city violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The ACLU must now decide whether to drop the matter or appeal to the Supreme Court.

The reversal is based on several key factors, including the fact that the median prison stay for inmates at the ACI is 99 days and non-felons can vote by absentee ballot in their pre-incarceration communities "provided that they meet the community's absentee-ballot requirements."

The district court estimated that total of six or seven inmates would end up eligible to vote in Ward Six based on strict interpretation of the redistricting plan and state rules about voting and incarceration.

It's a state issue whether incarcerated citizens can vote, not one for the city to settle, and Cranston is one of thousands of communities that base voting districts on raw Census data. Only a handful of communities carve out special exceptions beyond Census data, according to the ruling.

While the district court sided with the ACLU that inmates don't use local schools, rarely are served by Cranston police officers beyond transport to and from the prison if arrested in Cranston, which justified the dilution claim, the appeals court concluded that "the inclusion of the ACI prisoners in Ward Six [is] permissible."

Ultimately, according to the ruling, the ACLU's argument relied on court cases that "involve facts easily distinguishable from those of this appeal."

The ACLU released a statement on Wednesday afternoon in response to the decision:

“Today, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the First Circuit overturned a ruling issued earlier this year by U.S. District Judge Ronald Lagueux, who had held that the City of Cranston violated the one person, one vote requirements of the U.S. Constitution when it allocated the entire incarcerated population of the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) as ‘residents’ of one ward of the City when it drew district lines for the City Council and School Committee following the 2010 Census and thereby created significant distortions in local representation. A panel of the First Circuit instead ruled that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling dictated a different outcome.

“We respectfully, but strongly, disagree with the First Circuit’s ruling. We believe the panel misinterpreted the Supreme Court’s recent Evenwel v. Abbott case as vindicating the City’s position when it did no such thing. As a result of that misinterpretation, the panel opinion fails to adequately address the critical ‘one person, one vote’ implications of Cranston’s use of prison gerrymandering to overinflate the representation of constituents in the school committee and city council districts where the ACI is located. As a result, we will strongly be considering filing a petition for rehearing of the case before the entire First Circuit.

"To this day, we have heard no logical basis for the City’s decision to count the entire ACI population as residing in a single City ward even though people incarcerated there who are able to vote generally are barred from voting there according to state law. In addition to the constitutional concerns, the City’s choice is not rational. The prison population is wholly physically and politically isolated from the surrounding community, and local elected officials do not represent those incarcerated at the ACI in any meaningful way. This provides yet another reason for us to consider seeking an en banc rehearing, as well as for the City Council itself to fix this issue for elections in future years, as it had started to do before this appeal was filed.

“During this campaign season, serious concerns and questions about electoral fairness are being raised and felt across the country. Like those disputes, this case goes to the heart of the importance of fair representation, something that Cranston’s current system simply does not provide.”

This story is being updated.

Related:

Court Sides with ACLU in Cranston Prison Gerrymandering Case

Court Grants Stay in Cranston Prison Gerrymandering Case

Full decision: