Local voices, not courts, should lead the way on WA redistricting | Opinion

A messy redistricting battle is breaking out all across the country. In states like Mississippi, Virginia and Missouri, political maps are trapped in an endless loop of court fights and mid-cycle changes. Political parties are treating voting boundaries like a game of tug-of-war. They adjust the lines constantly to guarantee a specific political outcome, leaving voters feeling disconnected and ignored.

For decades, Washington state avoided this kind of chaos. Our state Constitution includes a clear promise. It says our legislative lines should be drawn through a transparent, bipartisan process.

The people created our bipartisan Redistricting Commission for a specific reason. They wanted to protect our state from hyperpartisan map-rigging. This process keeps communities of interest together. It ensures that neighbors who share schools, local economies, and cultural heritages have a unified voice in Olympia. Unlike the courtroom, where maps are decided behind closed doors, the commission is built on direct community engagement, holding public forums and taking local testimony to ensure the residents themselves shape their boundaries.

Unfortunately, Washington has now joined the national chaos. A series of federal court decisions bypassed our state commission, with a Clinton-appointed federal judge completely rewriting the legislative boundaries for Central Washington. He made one district look like an octopus crawling along the Columbia River. He altered 13 total districts throughout the state, giving Democrats additional power in 12 of them.

This local issue has now reached a boiling point on the national stage. In late April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a major redistricting case out of Louisiana. That ruling placed strict limits on using race as the main factor to override local community lines.

Based on that decision, local Hispanic challengers asked a federal court to throw out Washington’s redrawn map. The court denied that request on May 15. Now, an emergency appeal seeking to overturn that specific denial has been fast-tracked directly to the U.S. Supreme Court and remains active. But while judges and outside activists argue over legal theories, local families are the ones facing the real consequences.

This top-down map-making has been incredibly disruptive for the Hispanic community in our region. Critics from Seattle or Washington, D.C., often claim these new court maps give Latino voters a stronger voice. The reality on the ground is very different. The Hispanic community in Central Washington is not a single, identical voting bloc. You cannot just slice it up on a grid. Our Latino community is made up of small business owners, farmworkers, church leaders and families. They are deeply woven into the local fabric of this region.

When a court arbitrarily shifts boundaries, it breaks apart long-standing community partnerships. Cohesive neighborhoods are split right down the middle. In many cases, these new lines removed locally chosen legislative advocates. These were leaders who truly understood the unique water, agricultural, small business and infrastructure needs of the Yakima Valley. The court-ordered split makes it much harder for local Hispanic leaders to work together on vital regional priorities.

Rather than empowering Hispanics, the court-ordered maps actually decreased the Hispanic population in Central Washington’s majority-minority district and redistricted out the only Latina senator in eastern Washington.

We must return to stability and local choice. Washington’s bipartisan commission model is still the best way to get fair representation. It requires actual compromise, transparency and public input from local residents. When federal courts step in and allow partisan gamesmanship to dictate redistricting maps instead of listening to the community, local voices get drowned out.

The ongoing fight before the nation’s highest court proves an important point. True representation cannot be forced on a community by a federal judge or partisan elites in Seattle. It has to grow from the ground up. It must respect the actual, living boundaries of the people in central Washington.

No matter how the Supreme Court rules in the coming months, the state Legislature needs to act. We must strengthen our redistricting laws. We need to protect local communities from outside disruption. The diverse voices of the Yakima Valley deserve to be heard because of their value to our state, not because they fit into a box on a court-ordered map.

It is time to return the power of self-governance to the people who actually live here.

State Sen. Judy Warnick, a Republican, represents Central Washington’s 13th Legislative District, which includes parts of Grant, Kittitas, Yakima, and Lincoln counties.