Litigation over redistricting in Arkansas was fully expected. But it has come with unexpected, additional controversy.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas filed a federal lawsuit late last year challenging the new state House of Representatives districts approved earlier by the Arkansas Board of Apportionment.
That board is made up of the state's governor, attorney general and secretary of state, who currently happen to be Republicans Asa Hutchinson, Leslie Rutledge and John Thurston, respectively.
The map they approved to reset boundaries of the 100 House districts to address changes from the 2020 U.S. Census, the ACLU argues, dilutes Black voting influence and violates the Voting Rights Act.
ACLU brought the legislation on behalf of the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, arguing that more of the districts should have been drawn to reflect a Black majority.
The new map shows Black voters as a majority in 11 percent of the districts, while Arkansas' Black population accounts for 16.5 percent of the state and 15.5 percent of the voting-age population, according to ACLU's legal argument.
All of this is supposed to get a further hearing later this month. U.S District Judge Lee Rudofsky, to whom the case was assigned, has set a Jan. 27 hearing in the lawsuit.
The judge, or rather his political activity before being appointed to the federal bench in 2019, is the source of the additional controversy in the lawsuit.
The ACLU filed a motion for Rudofsky to recuse from hearing the case soon after it was assigned to him, asserting that his support of two of the three members of the board being sued could raise questions about his impartiality.
Rudofsky worked in the office of Attorney General Rutledge from 2015 through 2018, donated $1,000 to her re-election campaign in 2017 and hosted a fundraiser for her in 2018. He also donated $500 to Gov. Hutchinson in 2018.
The judge declined to step aside late last week, after he had set this January hearing to address scheduling challenges.
The redistricting map in question was adopted on Nov. 29. The lawsuit was filed Dec. 29, when the plan went into effect.
Candidates for the House this year are scheduled to file for districts as presented in the map.
Filing for the preferential primary election and for non-partisan elections in Arkansas opens Feb. 22 and closes on March 1.
That's a mighty tight schedule to resolve whether the map will stand or not, especially if another judge would have had to step in to hear the case.
In truth, it's just one more manifestation of the problems with this year's covid-influenced U.S. Census, the delays that began when field work necesarily slowed, ultimately impacting when the states and localities got their 2020 population changes and were able to begin redistricting.
Litigation over the redrawn maps, which is almost as certain a part of the process as the count itself, was sure to drag along behind.
Judge Rudofsky could have recused quickly, eliminating even the appearance of a conflict, but that didn't happen.
Instead, Rudofsky said he has a "duty to sit" on the case assigned to him and that his political support of the attorney general and governor who are defendants in the case was long enough ago not to influence how he might decide this matter.
The judge went to considerable pains, in a 17-page order, to try to explain away the question raised by the motion for recusal.
Nevertheless, the question will hang over the case as he determines whether or not Arkansas' minority vote has been wrongly diluted.