Ruling awaited in Fremont Co. voting rights case

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) – Lawyers in a federal lawsuit in which five American Indians are challenging Fremont County’s system of holding at-large elections say they’re anxious for a federal judge to issue a ruling nearly three years after he held a trial in the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union represents five members of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes who sued Fremont County in 2005. Their lawsuit claims the county’s system of holding at-large elections violates federal law by diluting the American Indian vote.

The plaintiffs say the federal Voting Rights Act demands that Fremont County establish separate county commission districts that would give American Indians a better chance to get elected to the county commission. Fremont County counters that separate voting districts are unnecessary.

Judge Alan B. Johnson of Cheyenne presided over a trial in February 2007. His office declined comment about his timetable for ruling on it.

Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project in Atlanta, represented the American Indian plaintiffs together with Lander lawyers Andrew Baldwin and Berthenia Crocker. Baldwin declined comment. McDonald said Wednesday that he’s written to Johnson a couple of times, most recently just before the holidays, saying he hopes the case can be resolved soon.

Voting rights cases are among the most complicated cases that federal courts handle, McDonald said. He said he’s worked on such cases in other states in which judges have also taken up to a few years to rule.

The cases are complicated because they involve a range of witnesses including statisticians, demographers, political scientists and historians, McDonald said.

“There’s so much stuff that you have to look at,” McDonald said. “You have to look at the entire history of discrimination in the jurisdiction.”

A Denver-based conservative legal foundation defended Fremont County in the lawsuit. The Mountain States Legal Foundation used the case as a platform to try to assail the federal Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional. Johnson ultimately denied the foundation’s legal challenge, noting that the law has survived court scrutiny elsewhere.

Brian Varn, Fremont County Attorney, said his office also defended the county in the lawsuit. He said the county also is eager to see a resolution to the case.

“It’s on our minds. It’s still bubbling and everybody knows it’s out there,” Varn said.

“We’re afraid that something would break really late, that we would have to respond to in an election year,” Varn said.

If the county loses, Varn said it would be difficult for it to craft new commission districts during an election year while candidates are campaigning.

Varn said the election of Keja Whiteman, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, to the county commission in 2006 supports the county’s position in the lawsuit.

“I think the biggest argument that it’s unneeded at this point was the election of Ms. Whiteman,” Varn said.

Whiteman was elected to one of three open seats on the county commission in an at-large election, winning four of the six precincts in Lander, where most of the voters are not American Indians.

Despite Whiteman’s election, McDonald said he believes the facts presented at trial show conclusively that the American Indian vote in Fremont is being diluted by the at-large voting system.

“No Indians had been elected prior to filing the lawsuit, and the only Indian to get elected was somebody who ran after the litigation, and she ran on a platform of maintaining the existing system,” McDonald said.

Whiteman didn’t respond to a telephone message seeking comment.