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Automatically, excluding all persons below the age of 18 in redistricting would undercount people of color. This is because Black, Latino, Asian and Native American communities are on average significantly younger than the population at large—and particularly, White Americans. The median age among Latinos, for instance, is nearly a decade below the U.S. median population of 37.2 years. This trend continues among other communities of color, with average age being in the low- to mid-thirties. In contrast, the White population’s median age is 42 years. Considering these numbers, it becomes apparent that excluding young Americans—as the Evenwel plaintiffs argue must be done in redistricting—is a proxy to exclude people of color. Over one-half of Latinos and nearly a third of African American, Asian and Native Americans would not be counted during redistricting.
More problems would arise due to counting only the voting population in redistricting. The plaintiffs’ scheme would discount whole populations of residents who have not yet naturalized. As of January 2013, 8.8 million lawful permanent residents in the United States were eligible for naturalization, primarily people of color. If the scheme proposed in the Evenwel v. Abbott challenge were to take hold, millions of people who pay taxes, own businesses and send their kids to school would be shut out of representation.
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