Associated Press: Minnesota courts release new political district maps

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A Minnesota panel of five judges released new congressional and legislative district maps on Tuesday, repositioning the state’s political landscape for the next 10 years and setting the stage for November’s midterm elections.

The newly drawn maps showed expansions and contractions of Minnesota’s eight congressional seats, which are currently split between four Republicans and four Democrats. Shifts in legislative districts also raise the stakes for control of a divided Legislature with narrow margins as every seat in both chambers is up for grabs in November. …

Minnesota just barely held onto its eight seats in Congress after concerns the state would lose the seat to other faster-growing states in the South and West. Census data released last year showed a shift in urban and suburban population growth in the Twin Cities metro area and away from more rural parts of the state that stagnated or saw declines in population.

Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera, executive director of Common Cause Minnesota, said in a statement that the courts fell short of the panel’s goal to keep communities of color intact within districts, citing splits between House districts for Black immigrant communities in the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities and Latino communities in the southwestern suburbs.

“Minnesotans don’t want Republican or Democratic maps — we want fair maps that give us a voice in our government, regardless of political party, race, or ethnicity,” she said. “These maps rob Minnesotans of color from having a fair say in our government.”