Illinois Republicans Sue Over Legislative Map, Claiming it Favors Democrats

The Illinois General Assembly, comprised of a House and Senate, meets at the state Capitol building in Springfield, Ill. (Randy Runtsch/Adobe Stock)

Illinois House Minority Leader Tony McCombie (R) and five Republican voters filed a lawsuit Tuesday in the state Supreme Court challenging a legislative map they claimed unconstitutionally favors Democrats.

“Extreme partisan gerrymandering like this is poisonous to the functioning of any democracy,” the GOP plaintiffs said in their complaint.

Currently, Democrats hold two-thirds of all seats in the Illinois General Assembly. The state’s congressional delegation reflects this same trend — with Democrats holding both Senate seats and 14 out of the 17 House seats. 

McCombie and the voters argued the state House map drawn by the Legislature after the release of 2020 census data and approved by the governor in September 2021 is a partisan gerrymander that creates an unfair advantage for the Democratic Party. 

“[The districts] are drawn by the political party in control and are intended to entrench the Democratic Party in power. The districts are also meant to prevent voters affiliated with the minority party from electing candidates of their choice,” the plaintiffs said. “In other words, the general election outcomes are rigged.”

They argued there’s a large discrepancy between the statewide vote totals for each party and the percentage of seats they won. They explained that Democratic candidates won 55% of the statewide vote in the 2024 election, but they won a supermajority of the state House districts — over 66%.

Ultimately, the plaintiffs argued this map violates the Illinois Constitution’s Free and Equal Election Clause and its requirement that legislative districts be “compact, contiguous and substantially equal in population.”

In their complaint, the Republicans also mentioned the racial gerrymandering claims that have been brought over this map.

In October 2021, the NAACP and other organizations filed a lawsuit alleging three of the new state House districts are racial gerrymanders in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. They argued that the districts were drawn to protect white Democratic incumbents and dilute the voting power of Black voters.

The case was heard alongside two similar lawsuits in a federal court. A three-judge panel upheld the map in December 2021 and declined to order the creation of new maps that included more majority-Latino and majority-Black districts. 

Now, the Republican plaintiffs in Tuesday’s lawsuit asked the state Supreme Court to strike down the map and appoint a “Special Master” to “draft a valid and constitutionally acceptable redistricting plan.”

Read the lawsuit here.

Learn more about the case here.