On June 9, a 3-judge U.S. District Court ruled from the bench that Maine’s legislature must draw new boundaries for U.S. House districts in time for the 2012 election. The judges announced their decision immediately after hearing oral arguments in Desena v State, 1:11-cv-117.
Maine had argued that its legislature is too busy to draw new boundaries until 2013, and that the old districts are still relatively equal in population and that no harm would come from using the old districts in 2012. See this story. The panel of judges will issue a written opinion in a few weeks. If the legislature doesn’t draw new districts, presumably the court will.
It is very rare for Maine to lose an election law case in federal court. The state has won election law cases in federal court at least four times during the last fifteen years. Federal judges in recent years have even permitted Maine to get away with keeping an independent candidate off the ballot for U.S. Senate even though she followed the ballot access law. She submitted her petitions to the town clerks on the last day permitted for that and the town clerks said they didn’t have time to check the signatures, so the Secretary of State kept her off the ballot and the federal court refused to intervene. That case was Dobson v Dunlap, 576 F.Supp.2d 181 (2008). Also in 2008, another federal judge in Maine kept another independent candidate off the ballot for U.S. Senate by ruling that an entire sheet of signatures should be considered invalid, because one particular voter signed that sheet while the circulator allegedly wasn’t watching. That case was Hoffman v Secretary of State, 574 F.Supp.2d 179 (2008). And, the Maine Green Party lost all of its numerous constitutional ballot access cases against Maine during the 1990’s, and is only on the ballot nowadays because after losing its court battles, it persuaded the legislature to ease the state’s definition of “political party.”