* Oy…

* But it’s not all bad news. From Silvia Puente…

So while there are big challenges, there is also now big momentum. To that end, I’d like to thank our legislators for their investment in our community—most notably, nearly $150 million that will be available from the Illinois Department of Human Services to help immigrant communities adversely impacted by COVID. $30 million of that will be used for direct cash assistance and will be distributed through community-based organizations.

* Even so, here’s Dan Vock at the Center for Illinois Politics…

The new maps that Illinois Democrats drew for state House and Senate seats face at least two lawsuits about their validity. The first, predictably, came from Republicans. But the second came from more traditional Democratic allies: Latino rights advocates.

The challenge from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is especially noteworthy, because top Democrats in state government repeatedly touted the ways the new maps would promote ethnic and racial diversity in the legislature. Instead, MALDEF is asking a federal court to force the legislature to redraw its maps.

The civil rights group argues in its lawsuit that Democratic legislators used unreliable population data to draw districts that reflected population shifts over the last 10 years. The Democrats say they used the American Community Survey and other sources to inform their decisions, because data from the once-a-decade Census headcount wasn’t available in time for deadlines set in the Illinois Constitution.

MALDEF says that was a mistake, and one that could ultimately hurt Latino voters.

“Those maps are going to have to be redrawn using decennial Census numbers,” Thomas Saenz, MALDEF’s president and general counsel, said in an interview. “We want to make sure, when those new maps are drawn, the interests of our clients and of the Latino community more broadly are respected and reflected in the new maps.”

MALDEF’s lawsuit is relatively narrow, but it reflects broader frustrations among Illinois Latino rights advocates that the new maps shortchanged Latino voters.

The Latino Policy Forum, for example, asked lawmakers to craft 14 House districts and five Senate districts where Latino voters had a majority. The map Democratic legislators produced eventually did include those thresholds. But the number of Latino voters in 10 of the 14 House districts and three of the five Senate districts is lower than what the Forum recommended.

“We feel the districts that were drawn essentially were diluted, and they weren’t drawn as strong as they could be,” said Roberto Valdez, Jr., an associate director of the Latino Policy Forum. “That ultimately hinders the Latino community’s ability to elect legislators of their choice.”

Valdez said the low numbers of Latino voters in those districts is especially frustrating, because Latinos are already underrepresented in the Illinois legislature. Latinos make up about 17 percent of Illinois’ population. If they had that share of legislative seats, there would be 20 state representatives and 10 state senators elected by Latinos. But that’s unrealistic, given how dispersed the Latino population is throughout the state.

“Our map [produced by the Latino Policy Center] can at least reflect Latino population centers and allow them to fairly elect the representatives of their choice,” he said. “We don’t feel like that was done with the [enacted] maps.”