BEN NEARY Associated Press writer | Posted: Saturday, December 16, 2006 12:00 am
CHEYENNE - The U.S. Department of Justice is intervening in a federal lawsuit in which five American Indians are challenging Fremont County's system of holding at-large elections.
The department filed notice Thursday that it is intervening in the case for the limited purpose of defending the constitutionality of the federal Voting Rights Act.
Five members of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued Fremont County last year. They claim the county's system of holding at-large elections violates Voting Rights Act by impermissibly diluting the American Indian vote.
The Mountain States Legal Foundation, based in Lakewood, Colo., is defending Fremont County. In its answer to the lawsuit filed late last year, the foundation argued that it would be unconstitutional to hold Fremont County to the section of the Voting Rights Act which prohibits practices that dilute minority voting.
Fremont County Attorney Ed Newell on Friday referred questions to the Mountain States Legal Foundation, but efforts to reach lawyers there were unsuccessful.
In its notice of intervention filed in the lawsuit this week, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice stated that the United States has a right to intervene in any lawsuit in which the constitutionality of federal laws is questioned.
Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project in Atlanta, said Friday that he believes abolishing at-large elections would help everyone in Fremont County.
"I think if we succeed in this suit, nobody loses," McDonald said. "If we succeed, and if we get a system that allows all the groups in that county to participate in that process, that really fulfills the premise of democracy."
McDonald said the lawsuit is set for trial in February before U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson in Lander.
Federal appeals courts have already rejected Mountain States Legal Foundation's argument that the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional in a Montana case. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately declined to review that case.
In last month's general election, Fremont County voters elected Keja Whiteman, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, to one of three open seats on the county commission in an at-large election. The ACLU announced that it would continue with its lawsuit nonetheless.
"It frequently happens that minorities won't get elected until a lawsuit is filed; it's happened in a number of cases," McDonald said, adding that the fact that a minority person was elected didn't resolve the issue.
Fremont County Attorney Newell last month called Whiteman's election "a great thing for Fremont County."
Newell said Whiteman's election was proof that the county "isn't full of racists who vote along racial lines." And he said he believes Whiteman's success has weakened the ACLU's case.
"The entire premise of that lawsuit was an American Indian couldn't get elected, and this is clear proof that premise is false," Newell said. "She clearly got support from many Republicans and non-Indians to win like she did. She deserved to get elected, and she did."
In a field of six candidates, Whiteman received 6,422 votes - more than 18 percent of all votes cast. She won four of the six precincts in Lander, where most of the voters are not American Indians.