Title: IN RE APPORTIONMENT-TUSCOLA CNTY-2001

State: michigan

Issuer: Michigan Supreme Court

Document:

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Michigan Supreme Court 
Lansing, Michigan 48909 
C hief Justice 
Justices 
Maura D. Corrigan  
Michael F. Cavanagh 
Elizabeth A. Weaver 
Marilyn Kelly 
Clifford W. Taylor 
Robert P. Young, Jr. 
Opinion 
Stephen J. Markman 
FILED APRIL 25, 2002  
IN RE APPORTIONMENT OF TUSCOLA  
COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS—2001  
NORMA BATES,  
Petitioner-Appellant,  
v  
No. 120250  
TUSCOLA COUNTY APPORTIONMENT  
COMMISSION,  
Respondent-Appellee.  
PER CURIAM  
Following 
the 
2000 
census, 
the 
Tuscola 
County  
Apportionment Commission reapportioned the districts for the  
Tuscola County Board of Commissioners under MCL 46.401 et seq.  
In this action, the petitioner raised several challenges to  
the apportionment commission’s actions.  The Court of Appeals  
upheld the apportionment plan, and the petitioner seeks leave  
to appeal. 
We conclude that a districting plan meets  
constitutional population standards if the total departure of  
  
the largest and smallest districts from the average size does  
not exceed 11.9 percent, even if one district is more than  
5.95 percent larger or smaller than the average. 
We thus  
overrule the contrary decision in In re Apportionment of Wayne  
Co—2001, 248 Mich App 89; 637 NW2d 841 (2001). In all other  
respects, leave to appeal is denied.  
I  
The 
procedure 
for 
apportioning 
county 
commission  
districts is established by 1966 PA 261.  The statute creates  
a five-member apportionment commission in each county,  
consisting of the county prosecutor, county treasurer, county  
clerk, and the chairpersons of the two political parties that  
received the most votes for their Secretary of State  
candidates in the last election. MCL 46.403.1  
The Secretary of State provided the necessary census  
information to the county on April 11, 2001, and the  
apportionment commission met several times.  On May 18, it  
1 
Unlike 
state 
legislative 
and 
congressional 
apportionment, there are two decisions to be made.  First, the 
size of the county commission must be determined.  MCL 46.401  
provides generally that commissions are to be composed of no 
fewer than five nor more than thirty-five districts.  However, 
the maximum number is actually controlled by MCL 46.402, on 
the basis of the population of the county.  In the 2000  
census, Tuscola County had a population of slightly over 
58,000, 
and 
thus 
under 
that 
section 
the 
number 
of  
commissioners may not exceed twenty-one. Once the number of  
districts 
is 
determined, the statute provides guidelines to be 
used in apportioning them. MCL 46.404. No challenge is made 
in this case regarding the compliance of the adopted plan with 
the guidelines in that section.  
2  
 
 
voted to reduce the size of the board of commissioners from  
the current seven members to five. 
The apportionment  
commission then approved a districting plan for a five-member  
commission, which was filed with the Secretary of State on  
June 1, 2001.  
On June 29, petitioner Bates, the chairperson of the  
board of commissioners, filed a petition for review in the  
Court of Appeals.2
 However, the Court issued an order on  
October 1, 2001, dismissing the petition and upholding the  
districting plan.3  Petitioner has filed an application for  
leave to appeal to this Court.  She has also filed a  
“supplement” to the application raising an additional issue  
based on the recent Court of Appeals decision in In re  
Apportionment of Wayne Co—2001, supra. In this opinion, we  
address only the issue regarding the permissible population  
divergence analysis of In re Apportionment of Wayne Co—2001.  
II  
In Apportionment of Wayne Co Bd of Comm’rs—1982, 413 Mich  
224; 321 NW2d 615 (1982), we held that the maximum allowable  
2 Judicial review is available under MCL 46.406:  
Any registered voter of the county within 30 
days after the filing of the plan for his county 
may petition the court of appeals to review such 
plan 
to 
determine 
if 
the 
plan 
meets 
the  
requirements of the laws of this state. 
Any 
findings of the court of appeals may be appealed to 
the supreme court of the state as provided by law.  
3 Docket No. 235221.  
3  
  
population divergence in county commission districts was 11.9  
percent, on the basis of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in  
Abate v Mundt, 403 US 182; 91 S Ct 1904; 29 L Ed 2d 399  
(1971).
 In both the 1982 Wayne Co case and In re  
Apportionment 
of 
State 
Legislature—1982, 
413 
Mich 
96, 
141-142;  
321 NW2d 565 (1982), we parenthetically described the  
permissible population divergence as a range around the ideal  
population.4  
In a recent decision regarding the apportionment of the  
Wayne 
County 
Board 
of Commissioners following the 2000 census,  
the Court of Appeals has interpreted our earlier decision as  
4 In Wayne Co Apportionment—1982, we said:  
The Fourteenth Amendment requires that this be 
done with the least cost to the federal principle 
of 
equality 
of 
population 
between 
election  
districts consistent with the maximum preservation 
of city and township lines and without exceeding 
the range of allowable divergence under the federal 
constitution which, until the United States Supreme 
Court declares otherwise, shall be deemed to be the  
range approved in Abate of 11.9% (94.05% to  
105.95%). [413 Mich 256 (emphasis added).]  
Similarly, in In re Apportionment of the State  
Legislature—1982, we concluded:  
Senate and House election district lines shall  
preserve county lines with the least cost to the 
federal principle of equality of population between 
election districts consistent with the maximum  
preservation of county lines and without exceeding 
the range of allowable divergence under the federal 
constitution which, until the United States Supreme 
Court declares otherwise, shall be deemed to be 
16.4% (91.8%-108.2%). 
[413 Mich 141 (emphasis 
added).]  
4  
 
   
 
making the parenthetical range part of the requirement for  
permissible population divergence.  In re Apportionment of  
Wayne Co—2001, 248 Mich App 92-93. The Court invalidated a  
districting plan even though the plan’s overall population  
divergence of 9.05 percent was well within the 11.9 percent  
allowed by Abate. 
It did so because one of the districts  
exceeded the ideal population by 6.2 percent and was thus  
outside the “range” of 5.95 percent.5  
The 
plan 
approved 
by 
the 
Tuscola 
apportionment 
commission  
in 2001 presents a similar situation.  In the 2000 census,  
Tuscola County had a population of 58,266, so that a  
five-district plan would have had an ideal population of  
11,653 per district. 
The districts approved by the  
apportionment commission, and their departures from the ideal  
population, are as follows:  
District #1 
11211 
(-442) 
96.207%  
District #2 
12392 
(+739) 
106.342%  
District #3 
12174 
(+521) 
104.471%  
District #4 
11046 
(-607)
 94.791%  
District #5 
11443 
(-210)
 98.198%  
The petitioner did not raise an issue regarding this  
5 The Court of Appeals invalidated the Wayne County plan 
and 
remanded 
for 
adoption 
of 
a 
new 
one, 
retaining  
jurisdiction.  The apportionment commission approved a new 
plan, and on rehearing, the Court of Appeals denied the 
petition for review, confirming the new plan.
 In re  
Apportionment of Wayne Co—2001 (On Rehearing), 250 Mich App 
___; ___ NW2d ___ (Docket No. 235339, issued April 12, 2002).  
5  
population divergence question in the Court of Appeals, nor  
did she do so in her application for leave to appeal to this  
Court.  However, after the decision in the Wayne Co case, she  
filed a “supplement” to the application challenging the  
apportionment plan on this population divergence question for  
the first time.  She argued that the plan was invalid because  
District 2 exceeds the ideal population by more than 
5.95 percent. 
III 
The decision by the Court of Appeals in Wayne Co—2001  
construed our parenthetical reference to an equidistant  
percentage range as a mandatory principle in apportionment  
cases.  Our decisions regarding local and state legislative  
apportionment 
cases 
have 
adopted 
the 
maximum 
population 
ranges  
on the basis of United States Supreme Court decisions holding  
that plans that deviated by those amounts met federal  
constitutional standards.  In the local government context,  
Abate approved a plan with an 11.9 percent divergence, and  
Mahan v Howell, 410 US 315; 93 S Ct 979; 35 L Ed 2d 320  
(1973), approved a maximum deviation of 16.4 percent in the  
state legislative apportionment context.  We adopted those  
federally imposed limits without independent analysis and  
without 
indicating 
that any additional requirements were to be  
imposed.  Our opinions stated such ranges parenthetically,  
apparently 
for 
illustrative purposes.  However, no support for  
an equidistant range principle can be found in the United  
6  
 
States Supreme Court opinions on which our decisions were  
based, and there is no statutory basis for such a requirement.  
Indeed, those United States Supreme Court decisions approved  
apportionment plans that had population variances that would  
not have been permissible if an equidistant range principle  
had been used. In Abate, one district was 7.1 percent below  
the ideal population.  403 US 184, n 1.  Similarly, Mahan  
upheld a state legislative districting plan with a 16.4  
percent percentage variation, but in which the largest  
district was underrepresented by 9.6 percent, well outside an  
“equidistant range” of 8.2 percent. 410 US 319.  
Thus, 
the 
population 
divergence 
criterion 
of 
11.9 
percent  
total variation does not include an additional equidistant  
range limitation.  The Tuscola County plan adopted by the  
apportionment commission in this case meets the equal  
population 
standard 
established 
by 
Wayne 
Co  
Apportionment—1982.  In that regard the petition for review is  
denied.6  
6 
The petitioner has raised several other issues  
regarding 
the 
apportionment commission’s actions.  As to those  
claims, the application for leave to appeal is denied. 
Although 
the 
Court 
has 
some 
concerns 
regarding 
the  
interpretation of MCL 46.601 set forth in Kizer v Livingston  
Co Bd of Comm’rs, 38 Mich App 239; 195 NW2d 884 (1972), that 
issue is not properly before the Court because there is no 
evidence that the Board of Commissioners attempted to  
reapportion the commissioner districts within the thirty-day 
period mentioned in the statute. Absent such an attempt, or 
a 
declaratory 
judgment 
action 
challenging 
Kizer’s  
interpretation of the MCL 46.401, there is no justiciable 
controversy before us.  
7  
 
 
 
Pursuant to MCR 7.317(C)(3) the clerk is directed to  
issue the judgment order forthwith.  
CORRIGAN, C.J., and WEAVER, 
KELLY, TAYLOR, 
YOUNG, 
and MARKMAN,  
JJ., concurred.  
CAVANAGH, J., would deny leave to appeal.  
8