The Mountain States Legal Foundation will represent Fremont County's commissioners and other officials in a voting rights lawsuit filed by five members of the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"We are pleased to be able to represent Fremont County and its elected officials in defending against this baseless lawsuit and the ACLU's attempt to mandate creation of election districts on the basis of race," said William Perry Pendley, president of the Denver-based foundation.

The Fremont County Commission last week asked Pendley and County Attorney Ed Newell to represent the officials in the federal lawsuit filed Oct. 20.

County Commission Chairman Doug Thompson has said the county's at-large system of electing commissioners does not discriminate and that it won't settle with the ACLU, according to reports from The Associated Press.

The county has the financial resources for a court fight, Thompson said.

"Some of these counties that have been attacked by the ACLU have just rolled over and agreed to a consent agreement," he said. "That's not one of our options."

The American Indians want the court to prohibit the at-large method, or ask the court to implement a redistricting plan and schedule elections so the county complies with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, according to the complaint.

"The at-large method of electing the Board of County Commissioners of Fremont County was enacted or is being maintained with the discriminatory purpose of diluting the voting strength of Native Americans in violation of plaintiffs' rights guaranteed by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act," according to the complaint.

While the case is new, the issue is not.

In 1992, Fremont County voters turned down a ballot initiative proposal to create five commissioner districts.

The county has a five-member board of commissioners who are elected from the county at-large. The four-year terms of office are staggered, and the elections are partisan, according to the complaint.

Fremont County has 35,804 residents. Of those, 7,113 or 19.9 percent are American Indians. Native Americans comprise 16.3 percent of the voting-age population of the county, according to the complaint.

Indians are numerous enough and geographically compact so that they would constitute a majority in at least one single-member county commission district, according to the complaint.

However, Pendley said no evidence exists that Fremont County or any of its officials have prevented American Indians from registering, voting or participating in the political process.

"The Voting Rights Act requires that a racial group's failure to elect its candidate be the result of bias in the electorate against that group," Pendley said. "That is not the case here."

The Mountain States Legal Foundation represented rural Western counties in similar cases when in 1999 the U.S. Department of Justice sued Blaine County, Mont., and in 2001 sued Alamosa County, Colo., Pendley said.

The federal government prevailed in the Blaine County case, which involved American Indians, he said.

The Mountain States Legal Foundation prevailed in the Alamosa County case, which involved Hispanics, and the federal government did not appeal, Pendley said.

But ACLU attorney Laughlin McDonald said the problems with American Indian political representation in the West, such as claims an election system is not racist, mirror those of discrimination against blacks in the South.

Scores of political districts in the South have been successfully sued under the Voting Rights Act amended in 1982 to create single-member districts, and civil rights groups have prevailed in lawsuits by American Indians in the West, he said.

"Congress said you did not have to prove that (an election system) was discriminating in its purpose, but that the result is discriminatory," McDonald said.

Assertions that race isn't an issue in these at-large districts is "desperately inaccurate," McDonald said. "Race is already in the process."

NewsTracker

* Last we knew: A number of American Indians, backed by the ACLU, filed a federal discrimination lawsuit challenging Fremont County's system of electing county commissioners.

* The latest: The county retained the Mountain States Legal Foundation to fight the lawsuit.

* What's next: The case will be considered in U.S. District Court.

Reporter Tom Morton can be reached at (307) 266-0592, or at Tom.Morton@casperstartribune.net.