Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/379/433
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 06:18:49+00:00

Document:
Paul Rodgers, Atlanta, Ga., for appellant.
Edwin F. Hunt, Atlanta, Ga., for appellees.
Georgia's 1962 Senatorial Reapportionment Act 1 apportions the 54 seats of the Georgia Senate among the State's 159 counties. The 54 senatorial districts created by the Act are drawn, so far as possible, along existing county lines. Thirty-three of the senatorial districts are made up of from one to eight counties each, 2 and voters in these districts elect their senators by a district-wide vote. The remaining 21 senatorial districts are allotted in groups of from two to seven among the seven most populous counties, but voters in these districts do not elect a senator by a district-wide vote; instead they join with the voters of the other districts of the county in electing all the county's senators by a county-wide vote.
The appellees, registered voters of Georgia, brought this action in the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against the Secretary of State of Georgia and local election officials seeking a decree that the requirement of county-wide voting in the seven multi-district counties violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A three-judge court granted appellees' motion for summary judgment, stating that 'The statute causes a clear difference in the treatment accorded voters in each of the two classes of senatorial districts. It is the same law applied differently to different persons. The voters select their own senator in one class of districts. In the other they do not. They must join with others in selecting a group of senators and their own choice of a senator may be nullified by what voters in other districts of the group desire. This difference is a discrimination as between voters in the two classes. * * * The statute here is nothing more than a classification of voters in senatorial districts on the basis of homesite, to the end that some are allowed to select their representatives while others are not. It is an invidious discrimination tested by any standard.' 228 F.Supp. 259, 263. We noted probable jurisdiction, 379 U.S. 810, 85 S.Ct. 53. We reverse.
In reversing the District Court we should emphasize that the equal-protection claim below was based upon an alleged infirmity that attaches to the statute on its face. Agreeing with appellees' contention that the multi-member constituency feature of the Georgia scheme was per se bad, the District Court entered the decree on summary judgment. We treat the question as presented in that context, and our opinion is not to be understood to say that in all instances or under all circumstances such a system as Georgia has will comport with the dictates of the Equal Protection Clause. It might well be that, designedly or otherwise, a multi-member constituency apportionment scheme, under the circumstances of a particular case, would operate to minimize or cancel out the voting strength of racial or political elements of the voting population. When this is demonstrated it will be time enough to consider whether the system still passes constitutional muster. This question, however, is not presented by the record before us. It is true that appellees asserted in one short paragraph of their brief in this Court that the county-wide election method was resorted to by Georgia in order to minimize the strength of racial and political minorities in the populous urban counties. But appellees never seriously pressed this point below and offered no proof to support it, the District Court did not consider or rule on its merits, and in oral argument here counsel for appellees stressed that they do not rely on this argument. The record thus does not contain any substantiation of the bald assertion in appellees' brief. Since, under these circumstances, this issue has 'not been formulated to bring it into focus, and the evidence has not been offered or appraised to decide it, our holding has no bearing on that wholly separate question.' Wright v. Rockefeller, 376 U.S. 52, 58, 84 S.Ct. 603, 606, 11 L.Ed.2d 512.
Under the compulsion of last Term's reapportionment decisions I join the opinion and judgment of the Court, but with one reservation. There is language in today's opinion, unnecessary to the Court's resolution of this case, that might be taken to mean that the constitutionality of state legislative apportionments must, in the last analysis, always be judged in terms of simple arithmetic.
As this Court embarks on the difficult business of putting flesh on the bones of Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506, and its companion decisions of last June, I desire expressly to reserve for a case which squarely presents the issue, the question of whether the principles announced in those decisions require such a sterile approach to the concept of equal protection in the political field.
'The Senate shall consist of 54 members. The General Assembly shall have authority to create, rearrange and change senatorial districts and to provide for the election of Senators from each senatorial district, or from several districts embraced within one county, in such manner as the General Assembly may deem advisable.' (Italics added.) Art. III, § II, part. I.
Thus 'senatorial districts' are put into two classifications: first, those comprising one or more counties; second, those consisting of less than one county. The 'equal protection' problem under the Fourteenth Amendment arises by reason of the fact that all electors of the districts in the first group choose their own senators, while the electros of the districts in the second group must share the choice of their senators with all the other electors in their county, I agree with the District Court: '* * * voters in some senatorial districts cannot be treated differently from voters in other senatorial districts. The statute here is nothing more than a classification of voters in senatorial districts on the basis of homesite, to the end that some are allowed to select their representatives while others are not.' 228 F.Supp. 259, 263.
'It is to be observed that by Paragraph (b) of said proposed Amendment to the Constitution, the General Assembly submitted to the people the question whether they would ratify the Reapportionment Act and elections thereunder. This proposed Amendment, of course, is prospective and will become a part of the Constitution only if ratified by the voters in the coming general election.
Appellees take as their example Senatorial District 34, in which there are 82,195 of Fulton County's total of 556,326 voters. They say, as a matter of mathematics, that even if every voter in District 34 voted for the same candidate from that district, less than 18% of the voters in the other six districts within the county (i.e., approximately 85,000 of the remaining 474,131 voters in the county) could outvote the unanimous choice of District 34 voters. First of all, there is no demonstration that this is likely in light of the political composition of District 34 vis-a -vis that of the rest of the county. (In fact, the 1962 elections in both Fulton and DeKalb Countieswherein all appellees reside were conducted on a district-wide basis rather than a county-wide basis. See note 1, supra.) But apart from this, appellees' mathematics and misleading, for not only will the 18%, or 85,000, of the remaining Fulton County voters vote for a senatorial candidate resident in District 34, but also the remaining 389,131 voters will presumably participate in his election. Assuming these additional voters split their votes almost evenly between two candidates running from District 34the most 'favorable' assumption for appellees in that it will produce the smallest possible percentage of voters who can outvote the unanimous choice of the voters in District 34there will be approximately 280,000 votes against the choice of the voters in the 34th District, or about 59% of the remaining, out-of-district vote. This is a far cry from the 18% figure calculated by appellees. And, even if, on some odd chance, only 85,000 voters outside of District 34 participate in the selection of a senator from that district, and all vote against the unanimous choice of District 34 voters, the 18% figure is still misleading. For in this eventuality, the relevant voting constituency consists of something under 170,000 voters, and close to 100%not 18%of the out-of-district vote has to be cast against the choice of the in-district vote in order to outvote the latter. Our decision should not be read, however, as resting upon the misleading aspects of appellees' calculations.
South v. Peters, 339 U.S. 276, 70 S.Ct. 641, 94 L.Ed. 834.
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