TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — Cherokee Nation Tribal Council is heading to court over a redistricting plan adopted in July.

Two petitions for declaratory judgment have been filed in the tribe’s district court concerning a 15-district map passed at the Cherokee Tribal Council meeting on July 16 by a 10-7 margin.

Currently, the council is divided into five districts with three seats each, with two additional seats for at-large citizens. Under legislation adopted in 2010, the Tribal Council was under a self-imposed mandate to design and implement a 15-district map by Aug. 1 for the 2013 election, which will have nine of the 17 seats on the ballot.

The first was filed on Aug. 31 on behalf of the council as a whole against the tribe’s election commission.

“While a majority of the council approved and passed this legislation, and is presumptively constitutional, it was not a unanimous decision,” wrote council attorney Dianne Barker-Harrold in the legislative branch’s petition. “In order to determine the validity and constitutionality of this legislation, the Council of the Cherokee Nation seeks a declaratory judgment so this legislation is final and will allow timely preparation for the 2013 Cherokee Nation elections without any further dispute.”

Councilors Buel Anglen of Skiatook, Okla., Jack Baker of Oklahoma City, Julia Coates of Tahlequah, Okla., Cara Cowan Watts of Claremore, Okla., and Lee Keener of Claremore, Okla., filed the second one Wednesday afternoon against the tribe’s government as a whole, along with a request for an injunction to prevent the changes from being enacted. The map was passed with an emergency clause, which allowed for it to be enacted immediately upon Principal Chief Bill John Baker’s signature.

Anglen, Cowan Watts and Keener represent tribal citizens in Rogers County and northern Tulsa County. Baker and Coates represent citizens who live outside the Cherokee Nation’s 14-county jurisdictional area and would not be directly impacted by the redistricting efforts.

In their petition, the five councilors maintain that the map passed by council is unconstitutional because it does not evenly divide the tribe’s citizens who live within its jurisdictional area among 15 defined, relatively compact districts.

In the Voter District Amendment Act of 2012, passed on July 16, the proposed 15 districts and their current occupants are named, but no definitive boundaries are spelled out.  According to the map passed out of the council’s rules committee in June, 106,772 Cherokee Nation citizens live within the tribe’s 14-county jurisdictional area, putting the optimum population for a single district at 7,115.

Based on those figures, the district populations range from 6,466 in the proposed District 11 to 7,822 in the proposed District 14. District 11 would consist of Craig County and portions of Nowata and Mayes counties. District 14 would be portions of Rogers and Tulsa counties.

That data does not include the estimated 12,000 Cherokee Nation citizens with unverified or bad addresses on file with the tribe due to various reasons, including mailing address shifts brought on by 911 implementation efforts in some counties. Officials said those citizens were sent two mailers or visited at home to request them to update their address with the tribe. After two attempts, those addresses were no longer counted for redistricting purposes.           

“The Cherokee citizens of Tulsa, Rogers, Mayes, Washington, Cherokee and Delaware counties are being shorted adequate political representation based on population and tribal monies,” Cowan Watts said. “Right now, apportionment based on bad addresses created by 911 arbitrarily moves folks to the at-large population rather than count them where they live.”

The suit also alleges that the map is gerrymandered to remove some councilors’ seats while protecting the seats of several council members who voted in favor of the proposal.

Under the adopted map, Cowan Watts and Keener, who were both elected to a four-year term in 2011, would live within the same district. Anglen, whose term is up in 2013, would be in a district represented by fellow councilor Dick Lay of Ochelata, Okla., whose term does not expire until 2015.

“Cherokee people elect their representation,” Keener said. “Some on the tribal council are trying to take that right away.”

The suit specifically questions the proposed districts that would be represented by current councilors Tina Glory-Jordan, Joe Byrd, David Walkingstick, Jodie Fishinghawk and Frankie Hargis.

“These five members of the majority live in close proximity to other incumbents and all have districts carefully drawn to give them individual districts,” Parris wrote.

Currently, Fishinghawk and Hargis represent Adair, Delaware and southwestern Ottawa counties. Speaker Glory-Jordan, Walkingstick and Byrd represent Cherokee and eastern Wagoner counties.

Cherokee Nation Attorney General Todd Hembree did not respond to requests for comment.