By Rick Pearson @ ChicagoTribune.com, June 11

Only days after Republicans went to court challenging new Democratic-drawn Illinois legislative boundaries, a group backed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has filed a federal lawsuit asking to block the state from using the redistricting plan for next year’s election.

The suit, filed Thursday on behalf of five individuals of Latino heritage, contends the use of estimated survey data rather than specific data from the federal census has left the districts “malapportioned” in violation of the “one person, one vote” equal protection constitutional mandate.

Democrats used data from the American Community Survey, a product of the U.S. Census Bureau, and other unspecified “election data” to draw the new boundary lines for Illinois’ 118 House and 59 Senate seats. Democratic leaders said that was due to delays in specific federal census data caused by the pandemic and the Trump administration’s failed efforts to prevent noncitizens from being counted. Census results are not due until mid-August.

That meant the hard census numbers wouldn’t arrive until well after a June 30 deadline for the Democratic majority to draw the new boundaries and get them signed into law. Failure to beat the deadline would have set in motion a process that would have given Republicans a 50-50 chance at drawing the new boundaries [....]